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Have you ever had a deep, philosophical exchange with someone where you and the other person feel that you somehow agree on what’s being talked about – perhaps God, the meaning of life, or the nature of reality – but that the words you have to express it simply aren’t cutting it.
The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao.
– Daodejing, poem 1
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The nameless is the eternally real.
There comes a point in conversation, certain kinds of conversation, where nothing remains to be said. There is a shrugging of the shoulders, a freedom, and a connection of Heart. This is when Truth walks into the room. You can take any stranger off the street and touch the bottom with them. You can reach the end of language and circle the vortex where the ineffable lives, pointing your finger at it – simply smiling.
These kinds of conversation are what I, personally, live for. I have long enjoyed believing that you could sit a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Pagan, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Sikh, a Shintoist, an atheist, an agnostic, a Satanist, and a simulation theorist all together at the same table with the collective task of explicating the meaning of life and they, despite their differences, would eventually reach this very point – the end of language. This is the nature of God, of life, and of Truth. In distinction to the kind of epistemic realm spanning from objective facts all the way to anecdotes and personal observations, the Truth is a place where logic and language cease to take on the form our cognitive faculties are accustomed (and, indeed, designed) to apprehend the kind of thing we like to call “truth”. This is the distinction between what I like to call little-t-truth and Big-T-Truth.
In the same way that the “nameless is the eternally real” and that the “thing-in-itself can never be ascertained on it’s own terms”, the domain of Big-T-Truth comprises all possibility, all impossibility, and all paradox. In fact, it’s very nature, insofar as it can be grokked by those aforementioned cognitive faculties, more resembles paradox than anything else. There is nothing in particular which you are here to do in this life. At your core, you feel that and know that, and the feeling of freedom which that offers you can be both terrifying and liberating. At the same time, your core also feels that there is something which you are here to do. This is also both terrifying and liberating. How – oh, how – could both of these somehow be simultaneously “true”? Resting in the space where this paradox can, in some sense, be held not only in the mind but in the Heart, is touching down. It is allowing Truth to walk into the room in which you find yourself.
When that bottom is reached there is a resonance. Perhaps we take a handful of sand from that deep, ocean floor and, upon inevitably rising to the surface for air, we might say “Here! I couldn’t see the bottom and I couldn’t stay there. But I have this handful of sand to remind me.” To somehow be there fully and stay there would mean the dissolution not only of the mind, but of you. It would be some kind of waking near-death experience or perhaps enlightenment. Touching the bottom and bringing up a handful of sand is some kind of conversational enlightenment. It’s fleeting in its own way, as all temporal states are, and it’s also palpable.
Keep this sand and store it in a little jar in your Heart to remind you of what’s down there. These kinds of conversations are a beacon of the One Thing, a whispering of the Big-T-Truth. I dare say, this kind of connection – arguably the deepest possible connection, given that it’s a shared connection to the deepest possible thing – is what life is all about, so to speak. I call this kind of conversation the One Conversation.
One thing I have come to understand about the life story that I am living is my passion for deep and transformative, spiritual conversation. Conversation which facilitates our understanding and agreement on the meaning of life. The meaning of life is simple. Its simplicity has nothing to do with whether or not it can be explicated or properly expressed with language or even in symbol, yet it is simple nevertheless. It feels simple. And it feels good , when you touch down on that thing which matters most, on that thing which is calling out to each of us. People may bicker over the subjectivity of the way the meaning of life can be languaged from one person to the other. However, this neglects the thread which is common to all meanings of all lives, which is one simple thing calling out.
The meaning of life, in this sense, in an activity. It is a listening and a discovery. It is an uncovering of a truth which is everywhere the same yet appearing that way. I like to call the conversations that bring us to this place touching down or touching the bottom. When people work with me this is our explicit objective, to touch down continually, progressively, relentlessly, in spite of our conception of ourselves as limited and in favor of our knowing of that which we are as infinite and eternal, all the time, constantly, here, now, and always. These conversations are fuel for the spirit. They are the oil that lights the lamp which shines the light that we are. Contained in this resin that is harvested from touching down and agreeing on this meaning that is inherent and that’s baked in to all experience is sustenance for the organism, of our simplest and truest and purest being. We might say thats cheesy or cliche to say that it simply reminds us of something greater. But what else need we be reminded of? Other than that thing which lights the light. The medicine for all ailments and the flame which illuminates all things.
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