Friday, June 28, 2024
I love cruise ship adverts and vacation splashes which promise to give you the perfect getaway, a hideaway of bliss. If that doesn’t work, take drugs and a psychedelic trip out of this world.
A getaway, or a high, is a subversive homecoming. All trips are roundtrips. The feeling of “getting away” is a futile attempt to pull reality apart. Try as you may, but you cannot pull apart hunger from satiation. You cannot pull apart a vacation getaway from a return trip home. You can’t get away from reality by separating relative duality. The highs and lows live harmoniously, and you learn to leave them be.
Jesus said in John, chapter 16, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” What is “the world,” except the inescapable truth of good and bad fused together? This feeling of wanting to get away is a trip to what’s not there. It’s focusing on what you don’t have, what you don’t want, and what doesn’t exist – the one-sided mountain, the one-sided coin, the “perfect” life without a downside or a “care in the world.” Who are you kidding?
Try to separate the good from the bad, and it’s like splitting the atom. Separate the getaway from the homecoming; the high from the low; the pain from the pleasure; and you’ll end up right back to where you started. Things you’re thinking about – mostly past, future, and what you don’t know or don’t have access to is insidious. You don’t have access to what is not there – control over others; money not in your account; time that’s already past; time yet to come, etc.
Focus on what you don’t have, and it’s a world of misery. Focus on what you’re doing right now, right here – what you have access to, and that kind of peace takes you “out of this world.”