In many “spiritual” circles, they refer to two kinds of “truth”: Relative and Absolute.

Relative Truth is what we know and experience on a daily basis. There’s a you, there’s a me, we’re separate individuals. Events transpire over time. As the Zen boys would say, “Mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.”

Absolute Truth on the other hand is when “Mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers.” Everything is an illusion. There is no separateness. We are all one. There is no time, no “I.” Nothing ever happens, nothing is born and nothing dies.

Some teachers suggest that the absolute is, well, absolute. That’s the only REAL reality. Because it’s, well, absolute!

Others have been saying, “Oh, no, life includes both the relative and the absolute.”

And while I wouldn’t disagree, their position is still a sales pitch for the absolute… because it’s still ABSOLUTE.

THE ABSOLUTE… well that sounds so much better, so much cooler. Who doesn’t want to see everything as a dream, to be one with all, to be timeless and spaceless and birthless deathless? I mean it’s ABSOLUTE. Clearly, Absolute is better than Relative. Why would you settle for anything less than Absolute?

The choice of language, of Absolute vs. Relative, is a set-up. It’s a come-on. It’s an enticement for buying a taste of Absolute.

Let’s pick new words. How ’bout: Juicy and Bubbly? Or Fred and Wilma? Or Chocolate and Peanut Butter? Or Crap and Shit?

If we use words with less connotative difference, or words that don’t set up an obvious and instantaneous preference, or words that are preferred as a pair, or words where neither are desired… well then we can have a conversation, an exploration, an honest investigation into the various and varying dimensions of human experience.

Neither is preferred. Neither is special. Neither is a problem. Neither is bad. Now there is one, now another… whatever.

“Mountains are once again mountains and rivers are once again rivers.”

I was given a popular meditation book recently.

Aside from the confusing fact that the cover blurb said, “The most American form of meditation,” yet the book taught basic Buddhist meditation practices, I was struck by the fundamental teaching:

Whatever arises, simply allow it to be.

Sounds like a great prescription for living, doesn’t it? Simply allow whatever arises to be. Mention this teaching to any adult, with or without a “spiritual” leaning, and they’ll agree that if they were better at allowing things to be, their life would be calmer, more relaxed, more successful.

There’s only one problem with this theory… it’s impossible (hence the 150+ pages about how to deal with the difficulties of meditation based on this teaching).

Why is it impossible? Well, just check your own experience:

Imagine some unpleasant sensation arises… you get a headache or your shoulders hurt, or you have pain in your chest after hearing a friend with cancer say they’ll cure it with The Secret.

Now, notice a somewhat obvious reality: the sensation is there, whether you want it to be or not!

You don’t have to allow it, it was already allowed before you even noticed it.

Or, try a thought. Repeatedly think something like “blue balloon,” and notice that it’s kind of fading away by the time you catch a glimpse of it. (BTW, this is not an esoteric notion. Many neuroscientists believe that our discursive thoughts are reporting an event that has already transpired.)

So, you don’t need to “allow it to be”. It’s already been!

This reminds me of times where someone shares what they think is the profound realization that to improve an interpersonal relationship, “I just need to let my mother/father/spouse/child/boss/pet be who they are.”

Guess what? They already are being who they are. That’s all they’ve been, all along. They don’t need your “allowing.” They’re not lying comatose in a mad scientist’s basement, unable to move until you “allow them to be.”\

This idea of “allowing” what has an independent existence (whether it’s a parent or a sensation) strikes me as radically arrogant. It’s like sitting by a train track thinking that your “allowing” is what lets the train move past you. Umm… the train is on the move, regardless of your allowing… just like your thoughts, your sensations and, frankly, most of the rest of your life.

Rather than attempting to allow something that already is, or was, though, here’s something to try. It think of it as “backing up a level”:

When some unpleasant thought/feeling/sensation arises that you wish were different… “allow” yourself to be okay with the fact that you want it to change. You may as well “allow” it, because it’s simply reality in that moment.

You’re sitting to meditate and your leg itches? Rather than “allowing the itch to be”, notice that your leg itches and you are wanting it to stop. “Allow” yourself to want it to stop… you might notice that your technique for trying to make it stop was “allowing it to be”.

Your partner leaves the toilet seat in whatever position it shouldn’t be in? Don’t try to “allow” them to be who they are. It’s too late. You’re already pissed. Start with that. “Allow” yourself one moment of it being okay that you’re pissed (not that you’re “right”, just that you wish they were different).

Paradoxically, if you back up to “allowing” the thing that’s honestly arising — the desire to change what you’re supposed allow to be — you may find a surprising “okay-ness” with the entire phenomenon — the thing you don’t like and your not liking it — regardless of whether it stays, leaves, changes, or anything else things can do.

I’ll allow you to try it, or not. And I’ll allow you to tell me what you discover, or not.

How many of you automatically added “bits” to the end of the title of this post?

There’s a great scene in a Steve Martin movie: We’re outside his hotel door and hear him practicing the tuba. A woman walks to the door. He plays the tune for “Shave and a haircut, two…” and the woman knocks, interrupting the last note. Steve answers the door and and engages in a conversation with his female visitor, but the longer the conversation goes on, the more agitated he’s getting… until he says, “Hold on!” slams the door, and plays the last note, “… bits.” He opens the door, relieved as if he had just, well… you get the idea.

The mind seems to have only a few simple “jobs.” One is to make meaning out of events and link cause and effect (“Well, the sun came up this morning after we ripped the heart out of that virgin last night, so CLEARLY ripping out virgin hearts makes the sun come up!”) or to group things a context so we don’t have to analyze every event we experience (“__(Ethnic Group, plural)__ all smell like __(type of cheese)__, are great at __(something you suck at)__, and have sex like __(another type of cheese)__.”).

But another of its jobs, and the one I’m thinking of with the Steve Martin story (btw, anyone remember the title of the movie?), is the desire to resolve tension. And one form of tension is created by asking a question.

Ask the mind a question, it will look for an answer and it won’t rest until it finds one.

If I ask, “What’s wrong with you?” you’ll find a list of answers.

If I ask, “What’s right with you?” you’ll find a list of answers (and, if you look carefully, you may notice that everything you thought was “wrong” with you, could just as accurately be a list of what’s “right” with you!).

The problem is that the mind doesn’t care if the answer is RIGHT, it just wants to resolve the tension of having an open-ended question. If it can’t find a simple answer, it’ll make up a story and use that in place of a valid answer.

Any answer will do, as long as it FEELS LIKE it resolves the tension. And if it FEELS LIKE resolution, we believe the answer is correct. I mean, it has to be right, or I wouldn’t feel so sure about it, right?

Wrong, it feels right because coming up with any answer gives you a pleasant burst of dopamine (that sounds like an ad slogan for some futuristic gum). The dopamine hit that comes from  resolving the tension creates the feeling that makes us think the answer is accurate.
I call those things that “feel right” but aren’t necessarily, resonant lies.

It FEELS right that you have problems as an adult because of something that happened to you:

• as a child
• as a fetus
• in a past life
• all of the above

But there’s no evidence that any of those are true. The idea that “something happened to me then, which is why I have a specific problem now” is just a THEORY. And, it suggests that we’ve accurately assessed that “this thing that’s happening now” is, in fact, a problem.

In other words, by calling something “a problem” we’ve basically asked the mind: “What’s the cause of this problem?” We’ve created the tension by asking the question… And then we’ll go on a hunt until we find something, anything, that resolves that tension!

AND, the hunt seems like a valid thing to do only because we forgot that that made up the reason for the hunt!

So, I was invited to watch a video of a currently famous spiritual teacher — I won’t mention his name because: a) I don’t want to give him the free press, and; b) If I don’t say who it is, people will think I’m talking about any of a hundred people who this will sound like — and he says, “In order to discover the truth, you need to WANT it more than anything.”

Really?

Once we think, “There is a ‘truth’ that I don’t know, and knowing it would make make my life better”… we’ll go on the hunt for it. We’ll listen to anyone who says they found it, we’ll believe them when they say they know how to get there (even though their story of how they got there could be a resonant lie), and we’ll argue with anyone who suggests the path does not lead to a prize at the end of the rainbow.

We forgot that we made up the idea of a path, and then put ourselves on it.

Just because you think there’s a thing called “spiritual” (which is better than “mundane”) doesn’t mean there is a spiritual path.

Just because we can make a list of things we think are wrong with us (even though almost every human on the planet has the same list), that doesn’t mean there’s a path of self-improvement.

I don’t care how many people can clearly visualize unicorns, we won’t see a herd of them (or is it a “gaggle” of unicorns?) clomping through my backyard with someone’s drying laundry caught on their horns.