No User Manual

On the list of weirdness, there are a few pretty high up.

The top one may be that anything exists at all. To me, this is profoundly baffling and mind boggling. How can there be that something exists? That anything exists?

Another one is that we are apparently dropped into this world, and there is no user manual. We are just muddling our way through, and any attempts at constructing a user manual - through religion, spirituality, philosophy, science and so on - are all pretty feeble, even in what we see as their highest manifestations.

We find ourselves as a human being, embedded in this planet, solar system and universe, and we are completely baffled by it. And we naturally try to orient ourselves in any way we can, through various maps available to us - and modifications we make as groups and individuals throughout our lives. It is a quite pitiful situation, in both meanings of the word. It is pitiful, in the sense of it being somewhat pathetic. And it is pitiful, in the sense of inviting compassion.

Even looking at it from a more transdual view - which to me makes the most sense right now - the whole thing is quite baffling.

It is all a manifestation of God, Buddha Mind, Big Mind or Spirit - that which is beyond and including all polarities. And this world of form is evolving, continuously reorganizing itself in more complex ways.

When a being is born, the ground - the Unborn, the Original Face, formless awareness, space & awareness - becomes functionally connected with this particular being. And if the being is constructed in a complex enough way, this formless awareness ends up being identified as this being. It doesn't even recognize itself as distinct from the world of form, but sees itself as this being in the world of form. If it's lucky, it awakens to its own nature and realizes that the world of form is arising within itself. It sees that the being it was identified with is just a temporary vortex in the world of form, with no separate or independent existence. And from there on, there may be the realization that there is no "I" anywhere. There is just what is - the formless awareness and the world of form arising within it - and no "I" located anywhere in this.

But even realizing - directly experiencing - this, does not take away the utter bafflement of it all. We can continue to deepen and clarify our realizations, and it is all still a profound mystery.

Will it change? I don't know, but to me the most attractive view - until proven otherwise - is that it won't. It keeps me open, humble, receptive, curious, present.