Embracing non-being
I’ve been listening to a tape of Adya’s from a couple of weeks ago. My wife got it.
On this tape, it is quite remarkable how hard he pounds on our non-being. The pounding is as an individual. He attacks the idea that we have personal power, that we can, in fact, do anything by choice -- leaving perhaps the thinnest slice. I notice that I cannot really accept non-being. That the ground of being rejects non-being; being is my experience. As I consider my own non-being, because I also experience what he is talking about, I am forced to consider that I am the One.
It seems to me that we are unable to consider absolute non-being. Every time I look into this, I slip away from non-being into some other kind of being. What happens if I truly hold this question, “what does it look like to not be?” I am afraid of this question. Is the real work in this question?
Is considering suicide a consideration of non-being? Strangely, I think so -- no doubt, a narcissistic consideration. Narcissistic here means thinking that the “me” can affect the world, and change the course of the universe. Maybe this is the real meaning of narcissism, that at any level of being we look at our reflection and decide that it is enough. To be enough is a kind of death and a rejection of the whole.
I will carry this with me into my work at SACS.
I notice that when I touch these truths I want to keep on adding nuance. Each truth has a nuanced exception. Even this one.
r.slime
On this tape, it is quite remarkable how hard he pounds on our non-being. The pounding is as an individual. He attacks the idea that we have personal power, that we can, in fact, do anything by choice -- leaving perhaps the thinnest slice. I notice that I cannot really accept non-being. That the ground of being rejects non-being; being is my experience. As I consider my own non-being, because I also experience what he is talking about, I am forced to consider that I am the One.
It seems to me that we are unable to consider absolute non-being. Every time I look into this, I slip away from non-being into some other kind of being. What happens if I truly hold this question, “what does it look like to not be?” I am afraid of this question. Is the real work in this question?
Is considering suicide a consideration of non-being? Strangely, I think so -- no doubt, a narcissistic consideration. Narcissistic here means thinking that the “me” can affect the world, and change the course of the universe. Maybe this is the real meaning of narcissism, that at any level of being we look at our reflection and decide that it is enough. To be enough is a kind of death and a rejection of the whole.
I will carry this with me into my work at SACS.
I notice that when I touch these truths I want to keep on adding nuance. Each truth has a nuanced exception. Even this one.
r.slime