Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Search Party

What are we looking for?  Why aren't we happy? Fulfilled?  What is this life about?  Heavy hitting questions, dear sir.

It would seem that most of what we do is seek, and what we find we quickly pocket, scurrying to the next shiny idea.  But is this the best approach to life? I've heard it said that "you are what you seek" and I would back this claim.

A person becomes what he values, what he's after.  I for one see merits in wanting/desire, but I also concur with my Buddhist brethren in stamping attachment a villain.  You can get hung up on many a thing, and while stuckness may bear fruit (thinking Pirsig), it often holds you much too long.  

The story that finds me comes from Tuesday's with Morrie, and it's about a little wave...

So this little wave is bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air–until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. 

“My God, this is terrible,” the wave says. ‘Look what’s going to happen to me!’

“Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, ‘Why do you look so sad?’

“The first wave says, ‘You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?’

“The second wave says, ‘No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.’”

Boom!  Little wave didn't know what's up. Lucky his buddy was there :)

Jeff Foster, author and speaker about cool stuff and all-around smart-guy, says that when we seek, we are seeking oneness and completeness, but we're thinking about this in the future tense. "Life as it is right now is not complete!" we proclaim. "'One day' I'll find love/escape from self/completeness/enlightenment."   In truth, we're already there; we already are who we're clamoring to be.

Anything can be used by the seeker to keep the seeking going, and shiny objects abound, believe me.  I really like this, because I know how easy it is to make goals the aim, to make the search the point; but there is a difference between understanding this intellectually and knowing it.  Ultimately, it can't be put into words (silence is equal to noise, Foster says, which is a really abstract and trippy idea), and you must simply live in being, must let go of this "need to find."

Foster argues that it's our SEARCH ITSELF THAT IS THE SENSE OF LACK, SENSE OF HOMESICKNESS, and a search for wholeness is not the answer to incompleteness.  (I have a bit a problem with this, which I'll explain with the quote below.**)

Basically, everything you're experiencing, Foster says, is a wave of the ocean. Every wave in consciousness IS consciousness.  They appear and disappear in the parabolas of your day (my cool analogy :)

A wave in the ocean is a perfect expression of the ocean, though it believes itself and experiences itself  to be separate.  The wave seeks the ocean, looking for love, looking for belonging, and just like us humans, as long as it seeks completeness, it experiences itself as incomplete. (the wave, through seeking home, experiences homesickness).  THE WAVE WON'T FIND THE OCEAN OR BECOME THE OCEAN AND IT WON'T BE  GIVEN THE OCEAN.  THE WAVE IS ALREADY COMPLETE.  

So the takeaway, I suppose: drop the search party to be content, and don't attempt to understand the ocean. Just be the ocean. (very Teddy)

Addendum:
**While I understand that searching itself will not cure the lack we feel, I have a problem with tossing "the search" itself into the rubbish pile to be burned. 
In this passage from Shafak's novel The Forty Rules of Love, the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz unravels the idea of "searching for God" to a Sufi scholar quite well:

Sufi guy: “I never understand why you dervishes make life so complicated.  If God was with you all along, why did you rummage around the whole time in search of Him?”
Shams: “Because although it is a fact that He cannot be found by seeking, only those who seek can find Him.”

Final takeaway: I am Austin and I am SEEKING GOD...BECAUSE I FOUND HIM.  Life is a search party, whether we like it or not.  We may be able to sneak through the fog and know we're already at the "finish line," but life is where the waves are, as Mama Lazek would say.  Search well, but don't make the search your aim; lean in and surf them crests of curiosity, just don't cling to anything too tightly.  Okole maluna!



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