The Contemplative Myth and the Sudden Strangeness of What Is

We often find ourselves trapped in the exhaustion of a world that demands constant movement, a relentless economy of attention that treats our very existence as a resource to be mined. In this landscape of noise, the idea of a contemplative life is frequently sold as a luxury good, a spiritual achievement, or a ladder to climb toward some future state of peace. But we must ask: who is it that is climbing? And where exactly do they think they are going? If the absolute is truly absolute, it cannot be waiting for us at the end of a long journey. It must be here, vibrating in the very discomfort, boredom, or anxiety we are trying to escape. There is a common misunderstanding that meditation or silence is a tool to produce enlightenment. We treat this stillness like a transaction—I give my time and my focus, and in return, I receive a higher state of consciousness. But this is just another form of the "active mode," the part of the body-mind that manipulates reality to get a result. True silence is not something we do; it is what remains when the doing stops. It is like the space between the inhalation and the exhalation. If we only exhale, we collapse; if we only inhale, we burst. The natural state is the balance of both, yet we have been taught to value only the "active mode" because it produces measurable results. We are told that sitting in a park listening to birds is a waste of time, but that listening is actually a profound opening where the world is allowed to enter us without judgment. When we stop gesticulating and speaking in every known tongue, as the poet suggests, we find ourselves in a sudden strangeness. This strangeness is not a destination; it is the realization that there is no separate self acting as a conductor of the experience. There is only the hearing of the bird, the feeling of the wind, the throbbing of a sore tooth. We often want to leave the "mundane" reality of a tax return or physical pain to find something more spiritual, but the absolute is manifesting as that very boredom and that very pain. As Tony Parsons often reminds us, "All there is is this." When we think, "This can't be it, it’s too ordinary," that thought itself is also "this." The infinite, timeless totality is not separate from the calloused hand or the cold sea. It is the iridescent energy dancing in the seeing and the thinking, happening spontaneously and impersonally. The contemplative trap is the belief that we can multiply the observer. We think that if we are aware of our thoughts, and then aware of being aware, we are getting closer to the truth. But this is merely a hall of mirrors that fragments non-duality into infinite dualisms. To truly see is to "not see," because as long as we see an object, we are seeing something finite—a shell, a piece of seaweed, a cloud. To see the ocean, the turtle must stop looking for the ocean as if it were a separate thing to be found. The ocean is the very medium in which the turtle exists. Similarly, conscious presence is the most evident thing there is, whether we are speaking or silent. It is the background that includes the person who suffers and the person who rejoices, without preference. We do not practice silence to reach a goal; we might sit in silence as a celebration of life, a wonderfully useless ornament of reality. It is like music or dance. We do not play a song to reach the final note as quickly as possible; the point is the playing itself. We do not dance to get from point A to point B; the joy is in the movement. In the same way, being in a state of aware presence is not a method for liberation. Liberation is what is actually happening while the separate self is busy looking for liberation. It is the realization that the seeker is the sought, and the search itself is the absolute playing at being lost. If we stop trying to "kill time" and instead allow ourselves to fall into the silence, we may encounter anxiety or fear. These are not obstacles to be overcome; they are simply the waves of a deeper vastness. We often use activity to avoid the "cloud of unknowing," that space where the separate self has no coordinates and no control. Yet, it is only by passing through this cloud, by letting go of the need to know and to achieve, that we resonate with what we already are. This resonance is not abstract; it is the most concrete thing there is. It is the steel-bright thread of a thought appearing in a vast empty space, or the profound empathy that occurs when we sit with a dying friend and realize there is no longer a "you" and a "them," but only a single, shared presence of dying. The separate self wants a path because a path gives it a job to do. It wants to be the one who "attains" enlightenment so it can stand apart and say, "I am awakened." But any "I" that claims awakening is, by definition, still caught in the illusion of separation. Awakening is not of the self, but from the self. It is the disappearance of the one who was looking. What remains is not a "conscious presence" or a "perfected person," but simply what has always been here: the totality, the absolute, appearing as this very moment, exactly as it is. There is no journey to take because there is nowhere that is not "here." The wave does not need to travel to the shore to become the ocean; it is the ocean, even in its rising and falling. Why do we struggle so hard to maintain the motion of our lives? We are so devoted to keeping the body-mind in a state of constant friction that we miss the creativity hidden behind habit. Every sound, every color, every sensation is appearing for the first and last time, never to be repeated in exactly this way. When we stop trying to reach the next moment, the current moment reveals its infinite depth. This is not a state you can achieve through effort, for effort is the very thing that reinforces the sense of a separate doer. It is a falling away, a letting go of the ladder once you realize you were already standing on the ground.