The Way to the Answers
A fatal flaw of learning as I have experienced lies in the difference between being given the answers and given a way to the answers.
From early ages we are given answers and through that process our ability to seek our own answers becomes stunted. We simply develop a habit of looking to others which is also the habit of not trusting ourselves.
Our society corroborates that by setting people apart from others. The smart people who write books and do TED talks, the popular people, the people with opportunities, and then everyone else who should listen to and follow those we have elevated. Its an accepted societal pattern but all that means is that most of the individuals subscribe to that as a way of life.
We’re not just delusional to subscribe to it, there is all the evidence that its true, there are people with more money, more education, more freedom, more privilege, more opportunities, more skills, more followers, more popularity. We want to be like them, Its an answer that has been given, and no one yet has the answer how to change this.
Many, many, many have tried. There are nearly 20 million self help books purchased a year, a $13 billion dollar industry. An industry full of books that are giving you the answers, and still the divide continues and the sub-divisions are ever increasing. More groups with answers that plenty of people apply and yet still our societal and personal problems remain unsolved.
The cycle continues, we adopt others answers for a time, then things change and we need new answers. We are always seeking who and what to follow now. Much of our daily life and news is about criticizing who is being followed, or judging the answers that are being given and judging the people who we may have esteemed only a brief time ago. While it is highly dissatisfying to most, it seems we are stuck.
There is a way out of being stuck though. It starts with a single step on the path of The Way to the Answers. That single step is a step off of the path of being given answers by others. It’s a step that takes you out of the bandwagon and into a journey that can only be travelled by you alone. I say alone, and it is true, yet there are many on the path already that will keep you heading the right direction. Its just that only you can experience that which is within you, the same experience any true master shares in their own creative way.
One of my masters, Shodo Harada says, “Once you have realized your true self, you will know that this wisdom realized is that which includes all. All other paths were brought forth by this true mind.” If that is confusing, I will restate in this way. You must follow a path to the answers. A path to where the answers already live in you. To your true self. Once you have found it, you will see that all paths were born from that same discovery. From that one path.
That path is what Life in the Body is. A path to finding the answers for yourself. Whatever I have was given to me by other humans who have shared their path, and by nature and circumstance. That is what I am here to share with you. This is how I describe it based on what I’ve learned for myself, it is a way to the answers, not the answers themselves. Although the way is some sort of answer, ultimately it is a path where you will do for you what all humans have the capacity to do, and many never figure that out or find the way. It is my hope that this way serves a multitude and continues to remove the divide that keeps us separated, first from ourself and then from each other.