Self-Reliance; No-Self–Reliance

Sometimes I get lost in “me.” My financial difficulties, my mental problems, my physical pain and limitations. All I see are the obstacles that heighten my hardship. I become obsessed with all the systems that make my life more challenging and how all those systems need to change or just plain suck.

I get lost in a jungle of my own suffering and misery.

This has probably happened to you too.

Today in meditation, I saw clearly how this jungle of “me” had begun to overgrow and block my path. So I recalled what I truly value, what I truly want. A clear sense of love and compassion for myself, the world, all that exists, washed over me. I recalled the non-duality at the central core of being.

I recommit myself to this love and compassion, and a true wish for the end of suffering for all beings—even though I have no clear idea what that looks like.

I make this vow and the path becomes clear in front of me: a simple dirt path that leads I no not where. But it is the path I am on and where I want to be. It is bigger than “me.” It is All. It is Nothing. Emptiness and fullness in each step, each breath, each tiny moment of death and birth, death and birth, death and birth, and so on.

This morning I re-read Emerson’s “Self-Reliance.” It helped set the stage for this clearing of my path in meditation and contemplation. Karma.

I am who I am, not what happens to me. I choose the path I walk, and when I do this, the duality of life fades. Self-reliance. No-self—reliance. They are one and same. They are opposites, lovers, and All there is simultaneously.

The jungle of me is an illusion. A mirage with no oasis.