Cosmic Joke

 If you believe you are smart, foolish, naïve, perceptive, sensitive or any other way of being?  Could you consider for a moment that who you believe you are is just a point a view? There is a time and place for all these ways of being in your life. The important question is always "Is this belief and way of being serving me at this moment?" The great awakening is that whatever it is we believe is just a point of view. It is not the TRUTH. Thinking we know the TRUTH about anything, especially ourselves, is the "cosmic joke" life plays on us. A revelation happens when we stop believing we know the TRUTH.

 

So I don't accept that you are anything you believe you are.  You are more than any label and you and I are in the process of becoming. We are all a moving target. Now you might have the "thought" that I am trying to change you. It is just a thought; it is not the truth. Choosing to be alive is to expose ourselves to the things and people around us that have graced our life with their presence. I am but a mirror reflecting back to you from my point of view. I am not the TRUTH. I do not know the TRUTH. I can only reflect how you occur to me at this moment.

Those who insist that I have claimed to know or be TRUTH must pass on by, some of them angrily; because they will contend that it is I that has deceived them.  Once I was offended by their abrupt exit and tried to change myself to appear more acceptable but I no longer do that. I know now that it is easy to buy into the “cosmic joke” because life is full of tricksters.  But when we get the “cosmic joke” we are no longer susceptible to the tricksters. 

Ah, but maybe you are in luck this time and I will turn out to be the greatest trickster of them all.  No, I will not trick you out of your possessions or steal your precious time or emotions.   So what is the greatest trick of all?  It is when you finally get that all your life you have been taken in by the “cosmic joke”.  All I have to do is hold the mirror so that you can gaze at the image you have come to believe is you.  All you have to do is gaze until that image disappears and you get that all that remains is that “I” which is doing the gazing.   You will laugh out loud until the tears of joy roll down your cheeks.   Because you will know it is the last time that you will ever be fooled again.

Ten Thousand Horses - The Ayahuasca Adventure Revisited

For what seemed like an eternity I floated in a sea of endless expanse where, as if in a lucid dream, my every thought resulted in an instant unique drama in which I found myself participating. Now the screen of my mind had gone blank and I had been sitting in a place of profound stillness without thought or self awareness, suspended in an eternal moment.  But my quiet reverie was suddenly interrupted.  I felt a strange sensation but I could not determine from whence it came nor was I aware what exactly is was but it persistently demanded my attention.

Like waking from a deep sleep in the middle of a dream, slowly I began to remember my connection with a body, a body that has a mind and a body lives on a planet somewhere in a vast universe.  I have chosen to live in that body and on that planet for many years and now I must choose that experience again, right now, in order to continue to have that experience.  How odd it is to live in a body I am thinking with all there is to attend to.  But where else is there to go?  Like an invisible cord I feel my connection reaching across light years to this body and yet at the same time it is as if it were but inches away.  I begin to remember that this particular body and I are old friends.

Then there is that strange sensation again.  Oh, now I remember what it is, this body is telling me it is time to pee! 

I see and feel my hands reach out in front of me. My hands are holding ten thousand flashing silver filaments like electric reins each connected to one of ten thousand horses that are now at my command.  I feel my will to rise up traveling down each filament as my body is pulled from the bench upon which I was sitting.  I call out “baño, baño” as I was instructed indicating I want to go to the bathroom.  I see two small figures moving toward me in the dim light of the temple.  Just in time they catch my body as it falls forward.  Like two angels they bear me up and across the room toward the door.

Outside the temple, we float toward the elevated outhouse skimming over the path.  They wait for me at the bottom the stairs as amble up holding tightly to the handrail and plop myself down over the wooden oval hole.  A great relief begins to fill my body as a torrent spills into the darkness below.  Once more I summon the ten thousand horses and I am lifted up again.  This time I am able to control them so I do not pitch forward.  Carefully holding the handrail down the stairs I go where the chubby little Peruvian angels await my return.  Swiftly and effortlessly they bear me back to my seat. 

Wow, what an adventure that was!  What next will this body demand, I muse, and then I resume my tranquil reverie. I close my eyes as I merge again, without form, into the vast emptiness of eternity.