December 11, 2016: Love, Mind-Hacks, and the Holiday Season of Good Will

Love is not the result of antecedents, behaviors, and consequences. Love simply is, and is easily found in an unencumbered mind and being—in the rich emptiness. The path to get there can be messy and involve many tributaries, including much theater and the illusion of paths to get there. Hoo-nōs

Our paths to find Love, in spite of the theater involved, cannot be summarily dismissed. We have A Great Playground in which to delight. The trick is to not believe A Great Playground itself is Love, but simply an arena in which Love can play. However, there are consequences if we lose our way and get hacked by the rules of antecedents, behaviors, and consequences (is it behaviors alone?). How can we tell? When we are strident—dogmatic—in applying our rules of engagement, we create a class of winners and losers. Love is not about class or winners and losers, those entities are the product of a hacked mind. The question is not about “tis better to have loved and lost, than to not have loved at all” (another example of a mind-hack proposition), it is about how free we are. How can we tell how free we are? Can we let go of those who do not want to play the way we do? Or do we think that we have to let go of our play, to play the way others want? The former question can be leaden with sadness (a mind-hack that can remind us about how not to be hacked?) while the latter question supposes we must play by another’s rules to know Love (a mind-hack that can remind us about how not to be hacked?).

Perhaps there are many rules, many antecedents, many behaviors, many consequences—it’s called diversity—that are afoot and from which we can freely choose if we’re unencumbered. That state of unencumberedness does not mean preference-free, it means dogma-free. Or—let’s try this phrase—beginning, again, with a premise-free zone (that language could give one a headache).

It’s the season of good will (when will it not be just a season?). May we understand the difference between dogma and preference and may we practice the latter and eschew the former. And in our preferences, may we change if we prefer even while accepting that others may not agree to play. Most of all, even in enjoying A Great Playground, may we journey unencumbered (mostly anyway) and full of wonder and delight (mostly anyway). Perhaps we shall find some along the way who are also unencumbered and full of wonder and delight (mostly anyway). Perhaps we will find one who will stay and with whom we can stay while we journey and play and practice being unencumbered and full of wonder and delight. However, what really is afoot, what runs through all theater, through all hope, through all desires, through all of A Great Playground, realized or not, is Love. Too sappy—a mind-hack itself? Find a hack-free zone, a premise-free zone, a safe place to begin again. And even if it takes language and perspective to describe such a “place,” it’s our deeds that tell the tale—and perhaps our behaviors are best when we start with beingness instead of entanglements.