We have to be willing to throw it all away. This can be understood easily by looking at this proposal from a few different perspectives. First, nothing that we know is right anyway. Or another way, all that I know is that I don’t know. A tree is not the same as the word tree nor the idea of a tree or whatever you or I have in our mind when we think of a tree. There is no way to measure anything without affecting the measurement. Some scientists would argue that nothing has properties until it is interacted with. Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know. So many flavors!
Another reason that we have to be willing, and actually wanting to throw it all away is that that attachment is a very dangerous activity. We start doing weird things when we are attached to something. Attached to someone or to an identity or a belief or comfort or safety or any material possession that you can think of. Attachment takes us away from who we are, away from our original face, the one before that which our parents gave us.
And never forget that it is about the journey not the destination. It is about walking not where we are walking to. It is about how we are walking. There are an infinite number of beautiful paths. We cannot be so full of hubris as to think that we know which is best nor should we not be so fearful to let go of one path if God or the universe or wu wei seems to be nudging us towards another. We can never be on a wrong or bad path as long as we are really present. Return to presence again and again.
This is so insanely difficult for me to do! I still have preferences but I try really hard to be willing to lose people and money and possessions and my concept of who I am or I will surely lose all of this! And of course, in the end we do lose everything, we never really owned or had anything, we were just borrowing it.
But our societies are so good at convincing us of just the opposite. That happiness is the goal and to that end we will kill or lie or cheat or shame ourselves, as long as we can have that “something”. But as soon as we “get” that something we are moving on to the next “something”. We simply become hoarders. For an imperfect example, I vividly remember graduating from college, taking all my possessions (I got my hoarded collection of borrowed “Somethings” down to the smallest rental unit I could find, basically a closet) and I boarded a plan for a new adventure on a new continent for me. That was the freest feeling I have ever had. In many ways we are just trying to come full-circle. To return to the womb. To be present and shed all this stuff, all these ideas, all these fears. None of it is real anyway, and it certainly isn’t what gives life meaning. Now throw these ideas way that I have shared and just sit or walk or float, but be present. Be the space between the water and the wave.
