Beacon of Truth

Mind is a myth, alignment is impossible and the only thing we can ever know to be true

“Shiv - How do you align your mind with reality? This seems to be the source of where suffering arises for many people. What kind of gauge do you orient yourself by?”

.

***

.

What is the mind?

What is reality?

What is this I that wants the mind to be aligned?

What does it mean to align?

We use words to describe this existence and we assume them to be true.

Yet, have you ever perceived a reality without the presence of a mind? Has there ever been a mind without the presence of a reality? Has there ever been a sense of self without some existence to provide it context?

What exactly are we trying to align?

Imagine existence to be a sheet of paper.

It is as if you have taken the sheet of paper and folded it. And now are asking how one can make the paper whole again.

Does the fold really divide the paper? Or does it only appear to?

Does the crease make the paper any less whole?

Does it matter if you folded the paper once or a million times?

Theoretically, you could create an infinite number of discrete squares by folding that paper endlessly. And you could give each of those little squares an identity. The square right at the centre you could call “me”. And the other squares, you could call ‘a tree’, ‘a bird’, ‘the past’, ‘the future’, ‘a thought’, ‘an emotion’, ‘a fear’, ‘a longing’, ‘a joy’, ‘a suffering’…

You could label the sum total of all these squares - “the world”. Or you could call it “the mind”. You could title a section of the squares your “internal reality” and another section of squares the “external reality”.

But regardless of how you fold that paper - whether into squares or triangles, whether you scrunch it into squiggly sections, or whether you colour some sections dark and others light…

It is still the same sheet of paper you began with.

All you have added are your own impressions upon it but you have not changed it in any fundamental way.

Language, the words we use, the identities we create, the explanations we build - are interpretations we imprint upon existence.

But do we really know what this is?

Why do you believe life is any different from that blank sheet of paper? Why do you believe that creating these distinctions in your experience of life - of subject and object, of self and other, of good and bad, of right and wrong, of now and then - can change anything fundamental about the nature of what this is?

Reality - as we’ve defined it - has persisted for 13.8 billion years and we don’t understand why it even exists. Meanwhile, humans have only been around for a fraction of that time - and have used words to describe their experiences for a fraction of that fraction!

What makes us believe we are suddenly so powerful, so advanced, so unique that we could choose to ‘align’ or ‘misalign’ with reality?

Do we even know what reality is?

Then, what question can there be of aligning with it?

So when you ask me - how I align my mind with reality - the simple answer is: I don’t.

I don’t know what ‘reality’ is independent of this ‘mind’. I don’t even know if mind and reality are two distinct things. I don’t know if ‘I’ even exist in the sense that I feel I do. My experience of everything could all very well be a product of my nervous system. Or of another source entirely that I have no means of sensing or becoming aware of.

When people speak of “alignment” - what they really mean is learning to function coherently within a chosen paradigm.

So, if you are a religious person of the Christian faith - then reality is as has been illustrated by the holy book. And aligning with that paradigm looks like living, to the best of your ability, in accordance with the teachings of Jesus.

Or if you are a rational materialist, then you will function under a different paradigm yet may subscribe to certain social moral conventions of respecting others rights and freedoms, observing law and order and so on.

Yet, every paradigm known to humankind is just another fold in the paper. The more folds you attempt to align to, the more you end up boxing yourself in.

I also have my paradigms. But I see them for what they are.

And while I may align myself to them - I know that I am merely adhering to a chosen script. I don’t believe, for one moment, that sticking to that script will spare me from suffering.

Why?

Because that script is not reality.

My paradigms are just ways I have chosen to frame a reality I cannot comprehend.

Now, to answer your question about the gauge I use to orient myself by:

The only gauge that I know of is the present moment.

Everything that is happening cannot not be happening.

Any arguments with what occurs in the moment can only result in suffering. And typically those arguments arise because the paradigm that I have chosen to frame reality contradicts what is actually occurring.

Frustration and resistance is the energy I exert to empower the primacy of my chosen paradigm over the actuality of this moment.

Yet, when one has spent sufficient time in Nature - in the woods in silence, among the trees, animals, insects, moss and fungi - one discovers an entire world that operates outside of these scripts we are so accustomed to.

Life and death, struggle and striving are as much a reality here as in our human world. But there are no ‘injustices’, there are no ‘rights’, no ‘privileges’. There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

There is nothing to align to in nature. Because every organism is already entirely themselves. They have no choice but to live in accordance with their own nature.

Thus, while there may be conflict between creatures - there is no argument with reality.

While all organisms experience pain, illness, struggle, old age and death. Only the human suffers their own existence.

Now, I realize I may not have given you the response you were perhaps looking for.

But there is a reason for that.

We live in a society that is besotted with its own knowledge - to the extent that it believes this knowledge to be an accurate depiction of reality as it exists.

We believe our language to be true.

We believe our explanations to be comprehensive.

We believe our paradigms are the real nature of existence.

And so we speak as if we are beings of great will and volition - with the power to influence, choose, align and save.

Yet, it is all a great self-deception.

We have fallen to worshipping false idols. And those false idols are ourselves.

Let me ask you this instead:

How do you know you are not aligned to life?

How do you know you are not perfectly adhering to your own nature?

How do you know each and every one of us 8 billion humans on the planet is not operating precisely according to Nature’s designs?

How do you know our destructive presence on the planet isn’t just Nature’s creative way of introducing a pestilence, a destructive virus, a cancer, because the Earth is in need of a reset?

How do you know suffering is not to the human what the howl is to the wolf?

Are you sure we are so intelligent and powerful, that we could operate independently from the whole?

Are you sure we are not a species of organic marionettes being puppeteered to some predetermined script?

We do not know. We have no way of knowing.

However, there is one thing we do know.

And that is:

What is, is.

It is the only clue there is in this elaborate mystery that is existence.

This present moment, exactly as it appears.

One coordinate.

That’s it.

In a vast fathomless ocean of experience…

It is the only reliable beacon of truth you could orient yourself by.

---

Dear Reader,

As AI-free content becomes increasingly hard to find, I believe it is now more important than ever for readers to have a means of identifying works that are purely human made. I endeavor to continue to bring you works free of AI enhancements. The below stamp of authenticity is one I have seen used by other creators like myself who believe in the sanctity of human artistic expression.