A bigger self. An end to boundaries

Of all places to find a moment of clarity: Ugly Betty on Friday night!! She was criticised for not fighting and letting her man go, and she retorted that "maybe she was a bigger person".

If we are a small person clutching to a small world the tiniest breath of wind will fill our life with turbulence. If we are a large person we can consume even the biggest upset and not be overwhelmed.

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I am beginning to see how to overcome boundaries to find peace.

Peace is not a happy feeling. If we make the boundary "I am now happy" then we are no longer at peace because we will dread the passing of that feeling.

Instead it is the weakening of the boundaries.

Normally we try to identify things. We identify the objects around us. We identify feelings, emotions and characteristics of ourselves. We calculate things like "I am in love" and "I am happy".

The question is at what time did we fall in love and what did the boundary between not being in love and being in love look like? Was it like a marker on the road so we knew when we were travelling out of "non love" territory into "love" territory?

When we enter a room we think "I am outside the room" and then we think "I am in the room". But at what point did we make the transition? Was it with our first step into the room, or was it as our last step left the hall? or was it when we closed the door? Maybe with the door opened we might still be thinking about something in the hall and so we do not get around to entering the room for a while.

While it happens that we enter a room there is no exact boundary, no distinct being the hall and no distinct being in the room: there is no clear difference between them.

However when we think about it we like to think there is a complete difference between being in the hall and in the room. When we argue that the murder happening in the room and so the murderer had to have entered the room we like to draw a picture of the room and hall with distinct lines and exact situations. Its useful to think like this, but it missed the non-exactness of actual living.

In exactly the same way we like to think "I am in Love" and "I am not in Love" and if we like being in love then we start to amplify problems for ourself because when we identify in that exact kind of way that we have made the absolute transition into "not being in Love" we feel that "Everything" good is gone. When actually there was no exact total transition, and no exact total difference between the two.

The same with phobias. We think there is a spider in the room. Its an exact situation and completely difference from the safe one I had before. So I have a focused and exact response to the spider "being in the room". But how "in the room" does it need to be? and at what point does it trigger the phobia and at what point does it not. In reality there is no exact onset of a phobia, but in our exact minds the phobia is triggered very sharply. Weaken the boundary between triggering situation and non-triggering situation and then ask "when exactly do we respond?" There isn't such a time.

When we stop looking at the boundaries between things then the things blend together much more smoothly. Start painting without first drawing in the lines with a pencil. The colours can run together and smudge and one thing becomes another without the exactness that the mind pencils upon it.

This way we suddenly find that there is no important transition in life between one event and another and so the worst and the best can flow between one another with little mental drama.

We expect that we should pencil things in so we know what is going on exactly. But if we do this we will have just one pencil outline of things and will not be spontaneous to find other lines and divisions that we may need. We become narrow minded like the phobic who sees only the outline of their phobia in a situation and not the infinite other outlines.

Its a hard thing to realise but actually we should not pencil in so heavily and in such a fixed way all the time. The death of "my muse" is something true, but I should not pencil it into my life so strongly. This is life, and death and I should accept the fluidity between them and not fight them. She will not blame me for letting the outlines fade, there never was an exact one anyway. Her anniversary comes up on Friday I am wondering whether to make it such a big deal in my mind, or just to let the day come and go in quiet respect and fluidity.