The Disappearing River

Any fool knows what a river is. When you are a complicated fool, also known as an academic, then you may have a clever definition. When you are a blessed fool, like a mystic, then the definition melts.

Ask children what a river is, and you will get the best kind of answers. One child might say, “A river is flowing water,” while another happy child might laugh, and say, “A river is a fun place to swim and catch fish in the summer.” An imaginative child might answer, “The River is my magic friend.”

It’s perfectly obvious to any adult what a river is. Yet, look very closely, and the strangest thing happens.

The river disappears.

Allow me to explain, in some detail, exactly what I mean by that, because it nicely illustrates many of the things that I would like to share as we go along.

It’s a way for us to play, and for us to jump into the water of truth. It is a way for us to open our doors of perception; and with this splashing river game, to explore what mystical awakening really means.

Please join me in this game, and let us take a good look – where is our river? It is right there in front of us, (let’s pretend), but now we must inquire carefully.

Let us look at the river the way a budding scientist would look. Let us try to find some perfectly clean definitions. Let us ask: what is the river, exactly? Is it a thing? Is it real? Is it a dream apparition, or hallucination? What is it made of? What are its limits? What can we say is the river, and what is not the river? Let’s get it all crystal clear, and separate fact from fiction. Let’s pretend that we’re rational beings, and we want the whole truth.

Well, obviously, the river is made of water, flowing downhill between two riverbanks. That’s more than enough information for most people. It’s practical, down-to-earth and easy to understand.

We give specific rivers names so we can tell them apart, and draw them on maps. That helps us to navigate, and so on. Very sensible, very clever, how very grown up of us; but now – let’s look into it.

Where does our river begin, and where does it end? At what point can we say – this is the river, and this is no longer the river? Again, it seems fairly clear. It fits between two banks, it begins at the source, and it ends at the destination, more than likely the ocean. Where’s the game? The definition is simple.

Look closer, please. The wonder is in the water.

Firstly, the water in our river never stands still. Its nature is to flow. We cannot say that the water we were looking at a moment ago is the same water that we are looking at now. As Heraclitus once said, you cannot step into the same river twice. More precisely, ‘We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.’ He must have been a strange fellow, to express it exactly as he did, and he’s right.

We cannot freeze our river in time in order to define it, for then it is just a picture of a river, a dead thing, a theoretical river, not a real river. If we fix its position, we cannot feel its flow. If we measure its flow, we cannot know its fixed position. (Compare Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, if you’re scientifically minded – but please, do that later, let’s stay in the flow for now).

Furthermore, even the banks, the outlines of the river are not the same today as they were a year ago, or even a moment ago. The river has moved, gradually carving its way through the soil and rocks, and it will continue to move and change. That too is its nature. During dry spells, it will look very different from the way it looks during a flood.

Is it exactly the same river?

“Well, yes, obviously,” you say, but now there is an annoying seed of doubt. “Where are we going with this?” you might protest. “I smell a rat. It’s a game of semantics – you’re playing a word game.”

Please continue along with me, just a little longer, and please relax, dear reader. It’s just a river. There is an important secret here.

Going further still, we cannot say where the river actually begins. A multitude of little streams, millions of trickles of rain water, tributaries and wellsprings all flow together, in an ever-changing fractal pattern, combining eventually into this piece of our lovely river.

Even those little streams of origin are not fixed. Clouds come, clouds go; water either falls, or does not fall. Either a drop of water reaches the river, or it does not. We could spend a lifetime tracing the ultimate origins and never finish our task, for it never stands still. It’s a bit like the elusive search for the source of the Nile, but now it’s more complicated. Where does our river really begin? It seems an impossible question.

We might think that we’re terribly clever, and figure out the statistical probability for a water droplet to find the river… but, if we’re honest, that is just another disguise over the truth of it. We have to settle for a starting point of fuzziness, and leave it there. We cannot say that our river begins anywhere, neither can we say it begins nowhere, so… can we say that it is real at all? Are we hallucinating our river? That is a possibility – yet undeniably – here it is. When I jump in, I get wet. It is tactile, and it is objective. Other budding river scientists can test its wetness for themselves. Yet – where does it begin?

The doubt is becoming annoying now. Of course it’s real – it’s right there!

Neither can we define with perfect accuracy where our beautiful river ends. Let us say that it does eventually flow into the ocean. Simple enough. However, look closer again.

The ocean tides move back and forth, and the river mouth likewise changes from day to day. Watch a river mouth over the span of a year, and tell me that it is not so. It is living art, and movement, not a straight line.

Where is the clear line separating one from the other? Go a distance up the river from the ocean, and taste the water – it will be salty. Go further up, and it is pure again. Where does the ocean begin and the river end? It is not so clear anymore, yet paradoxically, it is still as plain as day. Something suspicious is happening here. Are we asking the right questions?

The whole thing gets impossibly complicated when we factor in all the variables along the path of the river. Some of the water actually flows under the riverbed, not ‘inside’ the river. Is that part of the river or not a part of the river? Where do we draw the defining line? It gets even more complex.

Living plants and trees along the way absorb some of the river water. Our marvelous river nurtures all, and it is a mecca for life. Is that green life part of the river too? If so – then how far away from the banks of our river do we go before it is no longer river? Or is it distinct, and separate? Can we draw a line here? Remove the river, and the plants change. Remove the plants, and our river changes.

Animals drink from the streams, bugs breed in it, fishes make their home in it, and people take water, or add things into the water. Some water evaporates on hot days. More joins along the way. Is that still our river? Exactly how far above water level must a molecule of water rise before it becomes ‘cloud,’ and stops being ‘river?’ When do we say it is ‘river,’ and when do we say it is ‘not river?’ Remove all those comings and goings, and what happens to the river?

Bits of debris keep adding to the stream, soap suds from laundry washing, and more trickles of water, and it might rain along the way too. All the while, even as we are watching, bits of sediment are being carried away, tons of it, and river stones are slowly, ever so slowly becoming smoother, becoming so beautiful, so refined, and disappearing within the river forever.

Many thousands of liters of water are moving away. Will the same molecules ever return? Will they reincarnate as ‘river’ in the same combination? It’s hard to say. Where are our boundaries?

It seems nearly impossible to define clear limits for our strange river. It’s not solid, or immovable, yet it’s right there. It’s not fixed or limited, yet it clearly isn’t everywhere all at once either.

In the end, it looks more like a complex interaction between our river and the landscape, the whole living environment through which it flows. Any distinction between ‘river’ and ‘not river’ is arbitrary.

The landscape, the very contours of the earth seem to be rivering, and the river seems to be landscaping. The sky, the clouds seems to join our river, and our river seems to join the clouds in our sky, the separation is not predictable or fixed, not to mention the earth, and the ocean. There’s no clear line between these elements, at least, not in reality. Theoretically, on paper, we can draw a line anywhere, and argue our reasons for doing so.

What we are looking at, when we look at our river, is not a fixed thing. It is more like a living process.

It is not really a noun – ‘river,’ – no, it is more like a verb, ‘flow.’

The river has disappeared, and we now see only flow.

Can you sense it?

As we sit here on the banks of our enchanting river, we are slowly becoming mystical. We are going back towards the reality that children still know, but cannot describe. The world is becoming mysterious again, as we sit here staring at the flow, wondering at its nature.

The word ‘river’ is practical for most sensible, everyday purposes. Yet if we look at it from another perspective, from a different state of mind, the way a mystic looks at life, then ‘river’ is a poor approximation for a great many things conspiring together in flow. I would like to go one more step, and call into question even the word ‘flow.’

The same complex patterning of interaction, impossible to fix, impossible to name, is the real nature of all living things.

It is the real nature of all thoughts, all beings, all consciousness and all matter, and the whole cosmos of it all – is a dynamic, living thing, impossible to describe within limits.

The truth is that everything changes, and as all things change, we get the illusion of a real, tangible river of time, flowing in one direction. It flows downhill, perhaps, speaking relatively, for what is downhill on this side of earth is uphill on another side, but our river of time is ever moving towards some undefined, infinite ocean.

We can measure its flow, in seconds, minutes, hours, but then we cannot know time’s fixed position. We can pin it down into a moment – now, or some point in the past, or the future – but then it no longer flows.

Where does ‘now’ begin, and where does ‘now’ end? Where does the river of change fit in between neatly defined banks? Only on our imaginative clocks, only on the imaginary time zone lines we paint so creatively, so sensibly, over our living, mysterious globe.

The truth is that words, numbers and theories, religions, teachings and gurus, books, techniques and deep philosophies, and this piece of writing too – are all the same. They don’t truly explain rivers – or anything else.

Yet every child knows exactly what a river is, and what it’s for.

This mystic river game illustrates so many important insights. It points towards the essence of that which became clear to me on the day of awakening.

The nature of thinking is river-like. The nature of life is river-like. The nature of matter is river-like. You and I – we are like a river too.

There is no river, not really; there is only flow, and not even that. There are only exquisite patterns, self-reflecting, creating each other as they go, as they flow, as consciousness becomes aware of their flow.

I can name these things. I can show them to you through my lens. I can hope to call on your heart’s understanding – but it really makes no difference at all. It is what it is. My words are friendly poems, calling to your real ears. They are little pictures, little arrows, little fingers, pointing to knowing.

That illumination which we seek is right here, within us, and everywhere around us, all the time. It’s not a thing. You can never take hold of it.

There’s no point in calling it ‘god’ – for that is again an object, a word, a pointing, and a cop out. It’s just a work-around.

It is that which illuminates things. It is that by which all things, including thinking, including time, can be known. It is wordless self-reflection, if you really must insist on saying anything at all about it.  

It is so obvious, so much closer than our own breath, that people go on missing it, all the time. Fast asleep, they think that they know, and they go on believing in their rivers, and giving those rivers names.

It seems so obvious to say what you are, what your body is, what your thoughts are, your beliefs, your personal struggles, your pain, your nature; and contrast that with what is not you – but look closer. Things are not nouns. You are no thing at all. I am really no thing. We are more like verbs: ‘flowing.’

All my life, I am becoming.

 All my life, I am disappearing.

With every inhalation, I am. With every exhalation, I am not.

Where did yesterday go? From where does tomorrow come?

I am what I eat, and what I eat is eating me. Who is doing the eating?

Thoughts and beliefs trickle in. Thoughts and beliefs evaporate.

Theories come, theories go.

Experiences arrive, experiences disappear. Where did they come from? Where do they go?

All my life, I am arriving from Somewhereville at Nowhere station, disembarking, and simultaneously boarding the next train to Everywhere City. All my life I am sitting in the same chair, looking from my window of consciousness at the scenery flowing past me.

The mind is flow. Under the riverbed of wakeful thinking, memory, belief structures, is another underground river – the unconscious mind. Where is the clear boundary? What is that no-thing that becomes aware of both the conscious and the unconscious?

Where does the body end and where do feelings begin?

Where do feelings end and thoughts begin?

Where do thoughts end and beliefs begin?

Take away the coming and going, and what remains?

We can say that our thoughts create neural patterns, or we can say that neural patterns create our thoughts, and we can pretend that those patterns are like real things, but look closer, please. Do those patterns not express the same plasticity as our river, landscaping its way through reality?

The body is the same. Air comes in, air goes out. Food comes in, waste goes out. Energy comes in, energy goes out. Water comes in, water goes out. Take away the coming and going, and what remains? Without the movement, without the appearing and disappearing, is the body not merely a corpse? And even that shell cannot last forever.

All through my life I am not, yet I am. Heraclitus was more right than we first suspected. I come from everywhere, and go nowhere, I come from nowhere, and go everywhere, and yet – here I am now, coming and going, plain as day.

It’s so obvious, and so obviously impossible, yet undeniably real. The mind slips.

Thoughts flow, or do not flow. Feelings arise, and slip away, like reflections in bubbling river water.

Being rests in perfect equanimity – just this, just so. The river flows on. It lives.

It lives our lives, just as we live its life.

To say that I end and you begin is valid, for practical ends, because I cannot eat your dinner for you, but it is to use a lens of rational mind, rather than to speak of reality’s art.

To say that I was born, and to say that I die, is true, in a limited way, but that is not to speak of reality’s art either. What is the nature of this “I” that is born, and this “same I” that dies? Take away the coming and going, and what remains?

As you are reading these words, a tiny part of me is becoming you; a tiny part of you is becoming me. We are interacting dynamically with life, as life; as our river interacts with life, as life. We are that interaction. We are that life, that flow. Yet we are not.

Language is an inter-penetration of river-mind, via sounds and forms, via ears and eyes. Breathing is an inter-penetration of river-air, through the fractal alveoli of river lungs, and so is eating, through the mouth, so is sweating, through skin. The same can be said for laughing, walking barefoot in mud, watching movies, relationships, falling in love, having kids, growing old, and dying.

We can define those things as things, if we like. They don’t need to be things. They are more like flow, interactions, more like living movements.

They are life itself, and it’s a lot of fun, and scary, terrifying sometimes, like swimming in a river for the first time. It’s all quite mysterious, and it can be sad, and beautiful, and meaningless and painful and horrible, and awe-inspiring – and it’s so obvious, right here, all the time. We are it. It is us. It’s all happening now.

Jump into the water, if you want to. Stand on the banks and stare in wonder, if you prefer. It doesn’t change a thing.

That insight – we are flow, not things – does not diminish our worth or our quality. It liberates us from feeling stuck, and from the fear of disappearing.

It resolves so many psychological and emotional troubles. We get to feel the truth of our living energy, our flow, and we get to choose to come back in line with that. The veil drops. We breathe a sigh of relief.

I am. Always was, yet never we were.

I am that I am. My goodness! What was I thinking? Who was I trying to be? Where the heck did I think I was supposed to go?

Can you sense just how ridiculous the idea of self-improvement becomes? And yet – life is always improving, always evolving, always eating itself, always rotting and returning to the soil, to start again, and again, and again…

The trouble is, even if we know all of this intellectually, we repeatedly forget. Test this for yourself, please. See just how long you can hold that thought (“all is flow”) in your head without moving to the next thought.

*

Can you feel it?

This realization has to go deeper than the regular layers of mind. It has to percolate, like strong coffee, in order wake us from slumber. It has to steep like a good pot of tea, to be fully satisfying. It has to soak in, right to the core, and we have to become like the receptive soil after a good night’s rain.

That part of the journey takes time, even though we can already sense, in some way, that time is an illusion. I find it surprising.

What a remarkably clever trick consciousness has played on itself! All hail the Cosmic Joker. He’s a lovable bastard, to be sure.

Why is it that we can dis-remember such an obvious truth?

In the heart center, in the body, there is a feeling of resistance, a tightening and a constriction. It closes the eyes of understanding, repeatedly, until we are able to surrender completely to flow. It’s one thing to understand this with mind, even though it presents itself as a paradox. It’s another thing to live this paradox, constantly. 

I want to explore, through the rest of this book, the deep understanding that unfolded within me, and within many other mystics before me, and since. It is a liberating way of being. It adds nothing to your universe that wasn’t already there to begin with, but it removes a great many things that act as hindrances and that cause suffering.

Analysis takes us out of here-now. Every thought is another movement away from truth, which is lived, not theorized. Every word I type here is another step away from that truth, trying to point, pointlessly.

It’s as if I am creating this huge, colorful sand-mandala out of sand-words, and soon it will disappear forever, all the colored sand swept back into the bucket of memory.

On the day of insight, of awakening, there was no mandala, or perhaps, the whole thing was a disappearing mandala. All things shone with innate meaning, but inexpressible in concepts. It was an ancient language, never spoken by tongues. It was cosmic geometry, the fabric of unspeakable intelligence. Everywhere I looked, there was another mesmerizing, living, pulsing poem of being. This was equally true of things I would have considered ‘ugly’ or meaningless before. I had simply been blind.

The opening of mind melted all questions, all doubts, all beliefs, all philosophies, all words, concepts and supposings – into one simple knowing.

“It’s all so sacred, so simple and so obvious, what a relief!” I felt, without formulating the feeling into words, and I began to laugh again, with a new quality of heart. I continued to laugh, and sometimes cry with exalted, inexplicable emotions, for days.

All of this rolled unexpectedly into my life one strange afternoon in 2008. Allow me to continue with that flow a little further down our river. 

This was chapter 3.

Next Chapter: Waking up Slow.

Start from the beginning Wordless Self Reflection.

Read Chapter 2: The Trouble with Sense and Sensitivity.