Lesson 13: A meaningless world engenders fear.
I recall reading, many years ago, some advice from a Buddhist teacher on developing the skill of detachment. They recommended that whenever you were watching television to intentionally turn off the show before the ending and go do something else. This interrupted our need for a sense of closure and, he said, could help you become detached to the outcome of events in your own life.
It never worked for me. I like closure. I like to know the end of the story. Detachment may be something worth developing, but not around my TV shows.
Trying to practice detachment in this way triggered my FOMO, or my fear of missing out. I could not let go of my attachment to knowing, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”
This is what happens on the larger scale of our lives that today’s lesson is trying to address. Our ego will not allow the world to be meaningless. “The ego rushes in frantically,” the lesson says, “to establish its own ideas” in the empty space of meaninglessness. It does this because of its inherent, control-based kind of FOMO. Our ego has a fear of missing out in its mission to retain ultimate control of our thoughts, and thus our world.
If we allow the ego to rush in and fill in the empty space of meaninglessness, it sets up a competition, the lesson says, between us and God. If the ego can keep us creating fearful thoughts and attach fearful meaning to the world, then God becomes part of world that engenders fear. The ego will manipulate us to the point that we see God as someone – or something – to be feared. God will become a being that has it out for us and seeks to punish us for our “sins.”
These beliefs – used most often by ego-driven religions – keep us in fear so we won’t notice the impotency and unreality of the ego and its power to generate fearful illusions. In other words, the ego keeps us compliant to its will.
If, however, we are willing to use the workbook to its full potential and employ its lessons, we can begin to master the art of detachment. If we can look at the world around us and say, “I am looking at a meaningless world,” and realize that it brings up fear and anxiety within us, we can use these exercises to begin to detach from the fear. We are no longer anxious about missing the end of the story, because we already have the spoilers. It all ends with separation banished and unity restored.
“A meaningless world engenders fear,” the lesson instructs us to say, “because I think I am in competition with God.”
Hafiz knows there is no competition going on between us and God. Instead, the Holy is continually beckoning us to become who we truly are – innocent children of God who are called to become the light of the world – just as God is:
I wonder how God gets any work done
when He could just be gazing at Himself
in awe all day? What discipline He shows.
I am talking about a real problem
that will
challenge you someday, though you may
know nothing about that yet:
Splendor taking over the place and
rising
from your body like a sunrise – gods sitting
on a hill needing to bask in you. For it is true,
we help sustain existence.
All types of fishermen, merchants and
seekers
will gather around you when you reach
your goal.
They will be wanting to cast their
nets into
the brilliant salmon run you become,
Leaping into the sky, offering to
take any near
along.