DAY 26
Truth feels cold when there’s nothing you can do about it. People feel the truth that life brings suffering, and they hate feeling helpless in the face of this truth. The result is great inner conflict. On the one hand, we pretend to accept that life brings suffering. On the other hand, we struggle to escape the feeling of helplessness. Modern medicine ends part of the confusion and struggle. As diseases are conquered, human beings feel more powerful and suffering is pushed aside—for the moment.
Suffering in the form of mental anguish has not been alleviated, nor has the fear of disease and aging, or the dread of death. Upgrading virtual reality is the story of modern technological civilization. (Just as the discovery of new means of mechanized death is a downgrade of virtual reality.) Suffering retains its grip because we want to cling to good experiences and the memory of better days. As long as youth, health, and happiness are rooted in time, with good times being preferable to bad times, there is no escape from suffering. Clinging to virtual reality means that suffering is part of the construct.
When you wake up, you don’t try to cling or grasp. You don’t store up good memories and push down bad ones. There is only being here now. In the now there is nothing to hold and grasp, nothing to cling to. By no longer clinging, you have cut off your connection to virtual reality. Then suffering no longer clings to you.
When somebody tells you to let go and stop holding on, does that advice really help? The most stubborn resentments, affronts, hurts, and anger are holding on to you, not the other way around. No one wakes up after a bitter divorce, losing a job, or being betrayed by a friend, thinking, “Now I’ve got something I really want to hold on to.” Instead, the anger and resentment come back of their own accord, and they last as long as they decide to last, not as long you want them to last.
What you are actually clinging to isn’t bad memories, negative emotions, old grudges, and hurt feelings. You are holding on to virtual reality. By waking up, you let go of your allegiance to it, and then the bad stuff stops clinging to you. Think about something that makes you really angry or resentful. When you have it in mind, let go. You won’t be able to, not when it is still clinging to you. In reality, you are where you are. This place is filled with bad things that once happened, hurts and resentments that are in various stages: clinging tightly, starting to let go, or almost faded to nothing. Virtual reality is set up so that, wherever you are, experience clings like barnacles to a ship’s hull. Seeing this gives you a sense of detachment, which is a sign that you are waking up.