Taking a stance of helpless and hopeless abandon
The Noticer doesn't hold on to anything
Taking the stance of helplessness and hopeless abandon, when fully embodied could open one’s eye to a beautiful paradox. I will explain.
Look in yourself, find places where you grasped in hope. I bet there was a projection into the future, a longing for something that is missing in this moment. You would agree with me that hope is created by our memories of past experiences. No, there’s nothing wrong with visiting past experiences. However, there can be the opportunity to examine our relationship with the past and how it plays out in the present. And in the present, we often express dissatisfaction with our predicament, leaving the present to hope again for a future that quite never comes. We go into the mechanism of imagination, hoping for happiness to be found outside of this particular frying pan. And again, hoping not to land into fire.
Here’s the film trick, here’s the illusion: all thoughts about the future, all we can call hope, is totally conceptual. It totally ignores the timelessness of this moment. In fact, with our conditioning around hope, we cannot even recognize that there’s timelessness— there’s eternal life right here, right now.
Not to trash our use of memory and the past because memory has utility. We can reflect on all of the times we thought we knew the future and the future didn’t pan out the way we imagined. We may even reflect on the past and see how everything changes—whether the good, the bad or the ugly. Everything changes! And then when we look at ourselves we may define ourselves(in hopes of applying our identity to our circumstances) by our beliefs, our race, by our careers, our nationality, and all of those will fade like the illusion they are. They fade because there is nothing solid, nothing permanent that can be perceived. If it has a name, it will change. If it can be talked about, it changes. For instance, our race, our beliefs, our nationality, these are related to the bodily form, which fades with every passing moment. Our situations, our positions, they change and fluctuate all the time, just like the thermometer set up outside.
What remains when these elements pass? Is that not what is always here? Right here, right now, there’s a Noticing. Do you Notice it yet? That Noticing doesn’t change. It is the One that has the capacity to notice every changing moment, every pulsing thought regardless of its content. The spiritual teacher, Don Oakley, describes it as the Thing that cannot be grasped just like the air! The tighter you try to grab it, the more elusive it is. “But when you relax and open your hand, you can notice the warmth of sunlight”, he describes.
This Noticer stays untouched by the passing of the illusion of time and circumstance. Like the wind, it’s boundless. And like it was recorded of Jesus in the Christian gospel according to John, “the wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”. The Noticer being the wind, the wind being the Noticer.
It is in this recognition that the paradox aforementioned makes sense: When we take the stance of the Noticer, no one is helpless and no one is hopeless. There is just the appearance of experience within the vast space of this Noticer.
For contemplation, consider what it is like to stay as this Noticer! Taking the stance of the Noticer, and fully letting go of reflexes and agitation in situations of helplessness and hopelessness, are you able to see how all things work together for good? Irrespective of what’s present?