Lemons
Mark 1:12-15
Life is like a box of lemons:
No matter which one you take it’s going be sour as fuck. And then you die.
I’m a really weird guy. Sometimes I try to fight it and fold in on myself. Sometimes, in beautiful moments, I stop listening to my thoughts long enough to let the oddness in my brain out. It feels to me like a pressure valve. I don’t really know how to be other than to say what’s in my head, and if all that’s in my head is buzzy, obscuring stuff I don’t say anything. I just think. And think. And remember all the other times I’ve thought and thought. And “Why the hell am I sitting like this, that’s the wrong way to sit. How do I usually sit?”
The reason for this short detour through my mind is to illustrate that, although not everyone has the same specific triggers or stories they tell themselves, we all have them. We all fall prey to old, outdated beliefs about ourselves. We all believe that the big scary yellow thought that rises up in us is sour and needs to be avoided. Or, conversely, that the big red juicy thought is sweet and we need to hold on to it for as long as possible, and if that fantasy doesn’t come true everything is just bland and boring.
The truth is those thoughts don’t have any substance or intrinsic quality at all. There is only a causal link between our thoughts and reality if we allow there to be. The thing that stops you from meeting the eyes of a cashier and sharing a smile (even underneath a mask) is a lie. The thing that makes you slip into old habits, firing from the surface of your internal activities instead of the heart, of saying things you don’t really mean, of disallowing yourself to take pleasure in something, of creating and maintaining in you addictions to things that destroy you - that thing is an illusion. Not only does it not have a flavour, it doesn’t have a smell, a colour, a sound, a material presence or quality of any kind.
That’s the good news, in my opinion. The fact that the cycle we can trap ourselves in does not exist. You can call it the devil, but it happens in the mind. Maybe it comes from some kind of malevolent force, but I think it’s more interesting to look at it as some sort of game. There’s a truth in the very
deepest part of our hearts that’s playing hide and seek, and if we could just stop putting any value in our buzzy, overly-evolved simian brains we could see through the mist and find it.
Not understand it. Not own it or use it for gain or to further build up some kind of false godliness. But to fully surrender to the mystery and majesty of it.
There is nothing stopping us reaching a place of solace. Of recognising that there is an observer behind the person we have constructed or that’s been constructed for us by the world. We (the true selves) are the ones looking out of our eyes. We are the ones that can remove ourselves and realise that the play of thoughts and habits is like a smokescreen in front of us, but that we have the agency to choose whether or not to engage.
And that’s the real point. Any kind of belief we give our egos, any compassion to that part of our mind, any quarter we afford it to dictate our actions or come between us and the god consciousness that we swim in every day, reduces our freedom.
Total, expansive, infinite, unbound - these are our most essential qualities.
We get to consume and commune with the world in whatever way we (which is to say the true ‘us’, which is to say ‘I, the universe, pretending to be different people') want.
We know the truth when we see it, we can’t help but react to it. No ‘wise’ person can tell you anything you don’t already, at the most real part of you, know.
It’s right there in language. Think about the phrase from the bottom of my heart for a second.
Close your eyes and introduce yourself to that place. To the flawless outpouring of life that wants you; that is you. That’s where god is. There’s no separation. Feel it in your chest.
You’re here.
The you that built sandcastles or got lost in music or saw worlds that only you could see or played football into long evenings as a child or stayed in and drew unashamedly, colourfully and absurdly, and did it all just for the doing of it, that is the real you.
Allow yourself to fall in love with it.
I want to end by saying, if I can, from the bottom of my heart, that I feel blessed that I’ve ended up knowing this community.
We’re free. To feed the deepest, deepest part of ourselves with the food that it’s crying out for. Don’t deny yourself that freedom. Don’t allow your mind to keep you in a box and convince you that life is lemons.
