Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are

by J. Jennifer Matthews

Striving for perfection, the compulsion to manufacture a perfect situation, is a habit with us. We are addicted to improving ourselves and our lives’ situations. But we cannot experience our true openness by improving ourselves. It is a bit like taking better and better care of our bodies; eating nothing but brown rice and vegetables and running marathons and so on, and doing all this in the hope that one day we will be able to fly.

‘If you say the Kingdom of God is in the sky, then the birds got in ahead of you.’ – Jesus of Nazareth, The Gospel of Thomas.

Because we identify with our desires, we situate our freedom in our ability to pursue and fulfill desires.

The fact is, we don’t experience the mystery of life by ‘working through’ our perturbation. We just experience it. We simply decide to experience life, without judgment or expectation. A moment’s lapse is a moment’s lapse. The reason our occasional, alienating thoughts and feelings bother us is because we think we should be bothered by them.

Wakefulness or enlightenment can be reasonably defined as appreciating the mystery of life in the present moment, while knowing it is the only 'thing' there is. Wakefulness’ opposite – the dissatisfaction brought about by reactive emotions and alienating desire – can be reasonably defined as the futile attempt to ‘get something out of life.’

The life of this moment has no outside.

Just as the sun does not revolve around the earth, but the other way ‘round, so our perception is not governed by the objects we perceive. Rather, objects are perceived according to our perception.

We all experience plenty of things that are indescribable, but that doesn't put them on a par with experience itself any more than my mother calling me “impossible” makes me a square circle.

I am not saying that the world is a dream, and certainly not a private one. I am saying that whatever you think the world’s status is, the fact is, that the ‘self’ who would be dreaming, (or really seeing things as they are), is an artificial program we are running, which takes up an inordinate amount of energy. In fact it’s a real pain in the neck.

Feeling numb to experience is caused by the false perception that you are caught in the wrong experience, as if in a predicament. This perception is caused in turn by the false belief that you are a self who pursues experience. You do not need to pursue experience. You are experience.

The whole idea of being a ‘self’ is already a kind-of philosophical self-protection. It is the false idea of an abiding redoubt or enclosure in experience, which will remain fundamentally untouched and unaffected.