Читать книгу The Book of Rest - James Reeves - Страница 24

We have two young children and therefore are often a little behind with the housework (this might be an understatement). There’s a mirror on our landing that hangs high above our stairwell and in order to clean it we have to affix a feather duster to a broom handle and stand on tiptoe at the top of our ancient and precarious staircase. It’s a monumental faff and one that sits fairly low on the priorities list, so as the months go by a very thin veil begins to cover the mirror that, even if we can’t perceive it, means we can no longer see ourselves clearly. Now, if we left that dusting job for 40 years (entirely plausible) then we wouldn’t be able to see ourselves clearly at all. Just a glimpse, an outline, a suggestion of who we are, with the gaps filled in by memories and ideas we already have about what we look like.

And that’s how it is for most of us in terms of grasping our true identity. Our deeper nature is obscured by our other identities. Our stories of who we are on the surface, our thoughts, our feel ings and bodily sensations all act like noise to cover up our deepest, unchanging nature. All of the things we believe we have to get done, everything we believe in and think we know to be true, and all our responses to the world with all its complexities – these are the things that lie in the way of something that underneath is always gleaming and clear, regardless.

We are not going to instruct you as to how best to dust your mirrors – that would go against the premise of this book, and as we have shared, we are not fans of dusting (or indeed any housework). Instead, we hope rather to lead you into an experience of seeing that you are the mirror, and feel the permanence of that fact regardless of how much dust you’ve gathered (or your penchant for cleaning).

We are a race of storytellers and belief-seekers, eager to find reasons and solutions at every turn, but this does not inhibit our ability to go beyond reason and take relief from the possibility that we don’t have to have all the answers – or any answers, special techniques or particular insights to see our completeness. We don’t, in fact, need anything.