Читать книгу Opening the Door: Jan Frazier Teachings On Awakening - Jan Inc. Frazier - Страница 10

When you live life without fear, you are breaking the rule that says to be human is to suffer. From the perspective of a life in which fear is alive and well, if you try to imagine what a fearless life would feel like, you might picture yourself being just as you are used to being, only without fear in the picture. It’s understandably hard to see how that could be. If you look at the moment fear leaves, it isn’t that you keep on being who you’ve always been, only with the fear part cut out like a tumor. It’s more that the person who has been fearful just isn’t there anymore. That’s why when fear leaves, you don’t feel like you’re the same person anymore. You aren’t.

Actually, when that happens, you haven’t really broken a rule. You haven’t “done” anything. What has been broken is you. The neatly-defined, well-bounded person has gone altogether missing. Talk about breaking the rules. Isn’t there a rule that says a solid sense of self is a good thing? A clear set of values, principles, definite preferences, aspirations? And there is the rule that says if those things aren’t there, you are a wimp, or not fully alive.

If your sense of being a separate, particular self has dissolved, how would you be able to tell yourself apart from everyone else’s self? Exactly. When you look at how much trouble is caused by our working so hard to distinguish ourselves from one another — well, there couldn’t be violence or greed if we didn’t follow that rule. Why would you beat yourself silly? Why would you hide food from yourself, make yourself sleep out in the cold rain?

When the separate sense of self has gone, compassion is the only possible orientation to all and everyone that is. You are everyone. Compassion turns out to be about self-interest.

But everything I learned, growing up, had to do with making myself a certain kind of person. Somebody admirable. Somebody with a lot of learning, with the right politics, good looks. As if any of that would make me feel like I had really lived when the time came to die.

When fear goes away, it seems to be because you can’t figure out how to take yourself seriously anymore. The rule about taking yourself seriously is what has been broken. Everything that has ever been wrong with your life has lightened up. It doesn’t seem to be a part of you anymore. It doesn’t need fixing. You can see it, but it isn’t you anymore. There is no one left that needs to recover.

Your dearly familiar self has lost its solidity. As a result, gravity can’t seem to get hold of you. Not that the world has broken the standing rule requiring it to be a bloody mess. You can see all that’s wrong with the world. But you aren’t a bloody mess. It all just happens. It’s just that it doesn’t scare you anymore. You know it all has to go the way it has to go. (Sort of the way you had to suffer and suffer until you didn’t have to anymore.)

The other rule that’s been broken is the one that says a person must die before getting to go to heaven. The day fear had its back broken turns out to have been the start of a whole new life. You couldn’t fear death now, because it already happened. Except that somebody who looks very like yourself is still here, roaming around, wondering how come everything has turned from a problem into a miracle.