And now we come down to it. A new way of dealing with suffering, with pain. Something much deeper than anything seen before, that undercuts the whole thing.
We've seen how real insight gets generated. But what do you do with those insights?
Because no matter how deep, fresh or accurate any insight is, it will, over time, fade. And no matter what new ways it gives you for dealing with paid, those new ways will lose power over time. This is a common problem of the old ways of thinking about life, a common problem of the conventional ways of thinking about life.
And it leaves us chasing. Always chasing. Chasing the next insight, the big one, the big hitter, the one that won't go, the one that won't fade. The one that will stay working, that will genuinely give us the new option we need, to move beyond the old rules of humanity, into a new world, where the rules of frustration, sorrow, and emptiness simply cannot apply.
Why is it that insight fades? That you can have a very deep insight into the workings of pain and suffering — if you take a genuine interest in what's really going on, that is — and for a few days, maybe a few weeks even, you can experience things in a new way.
But that power always fades with time. Life happens, drama happens, and all of sudden, we're back to square one.
So let's look at why.
Insight is a function of the right hemisphere, and like all things the right hemisphere maps, it passes any insight over to the left.
If that insight is especially fresh, and accurate, especially if it is an insight into the nature of suffering itself, it can allow you to be free of suffering, for a while. But the left hemisphere does what the left hemisphere does, which is to take that insight, and use it in a very specific way.
It uses any insight as, for want of a better word, fodder. Fodder to fill up its creation — the mind — and create the display of self.
So even with a real insight into the power of genuine human virtue, any and all insights are doomed to get passed back, over to the left hemisphere, and reworked into the same old fiction of self. Little, blind, divided — and ultimately, no matter what colours you paint your pain in, you're just the same as everyone else.
No matter how brilliant the perspective, how deep the insight, how powerful, how simple, how new or how true, the left hemisphere will use it as fodder to stuff another scarecrow.
And when it becomes a posture, it does what postures do, it starts getting rigid. Conflicted. Exaggerated. Shrill.
As such, all insights have a half-life, and quite a short one too.
Quite a lock, I'm sure you'll agree. And don't flinch the problem — look it in the eye. It's a big problem. Because unless we find a new solution, something that changes the terms of what is happening, then all virtue is doomed to be twisted into a loud and vapid parody of itself, and there is no hope.
But like any lock, it only needs to open once, and there only needs to be one way to open it, to get it open. There can be (and are) a million ways that this doesn't work. But there only needs to be one in which it does.
So let's take a look, and see if we can find one.
When you have some deep insight into the way things work with human suffering, it seems overwhelmingly obvious that this insight should be protected. Should be held on to, and built upon, to gain a deeper understanding of the truth, which we are reliably informed, will set us free.
But because of what we fundamentally are, any act of holding on to truth engages the fakeness of our natures. Grasp, we have learned, is the core nature of left-hemisphere thought, and because of this, any grasping, holding on, triggers that fiction, and the same old ways of living the same old life.
Any level of genuine virtue, whatever it is will yield insight into the nature of human suffering. But that insight will, over time, corrode, and end up as just more fodder for the old, conflicted self.
But if, instead of fighting this process, instead of trying to find a way to disrupt it, we use this process — and expand this process.
A new way of dealing with truth. Where you don't grasp it. You instead, let it go.
You can't hoard the insights anyway, no matter what you do. They will go. They will slide away over time. It doesn't matter how strong they are, how true, how potent — they will go. And probably quite soon.
And so instead of looking for the final insight, the final truth that ends all questions, we instead do something else. A final flip.
What do you do with the truth? Do you grasp it, hold it, keep it close to you, grip it tightly, so you won't lose it? Because if you do that, you're doing what everyone else is doing, and because everyone is doing it, everyone is trapped.
That grasping, that holds on to truth, is not inert. It is the core mechanism that engages the whole architecture of human delusion.
And remember — no matter how tightly you cling, you cannot hold on to any insight, it will fade over time, it will become corrupted and lost. So instead of holding on to what cannot be grasped anyway, you do something else.
You let it go.
Now remember for a second, just how amazing it can feel to see things from a new direction, a new perspective that makes sense of everything. In that moment, it seems ridiculous to do exactly that, to let it go, let it slide away, and be forgotten.
But it will go anyway, it will slide away, it will be forgotten, no matter what you do.
But it still feels like such a strange thing to do. To willingly forget, to willingly let go of something that is deep and real. If we do that, then surely we are lost? Lost because truth is such a rare and precious thing, and to let go of it such a foolish thing. If we let go of a really deep, really relevant truth, if we forget it, then what will become of us?
Will we be lost forever? Will we never fulfill the promise of that new way of looking at things?
Yes, we will be lost forever, and we will never fulfill the promise of new insight… unless.
Unless it actually is true. Things that are true have a quality about them that is unique, and it is this. Things that are true do not need to be held on to for them to stay true.
Things that are true do not need to be remembered, for them to keep being true. The real does not need our help to remain real.
Because although your idea about the truth will fade over time (and it will, whatever you do, nothing can stop that), reality isn't going anywhere. If it's real, if it's really real, it isn't changing any time soon. Let it go.
And here we see the final flip that allows a new way of living to arise. Something severed from the old, from the baggage of the past and the fear of the future.
Believing a thing in a loud and extreme way is like a clenched fist, holding tight to a core belief, and never relaxing that grip, even for a second.
Believing a thing in a small, but real way, means that you don't need to grip it, because you know that if you let it go, and it actually is true, the truth of it will not change or move.
And if you let it go, you can come back to that truth from a different angle, and see it in a whole new light. And just because you've let go of your original belief, or insight, doesn't mean that it gets erased. What is seen cannot be unseen.
And so by this process, finding, and then letting go of real and deep truth means that every time you let go, and you come back again, you come back richer, because your new understanding will include the richness of the last.
And let go of that, of even that richness, and when you come back to the truth, it will be richer still. And so on, and so on.
Not extreme and large belief, but genuine and small belief. Faith is not what you call believing in something that you hold onto through thick and thin. Faith is when you believe something is real, and because of that, are happy to let go of any belief, and have faith that reality isn't going anywhere.
So how does this work, this new way of handling truth, and how does it relate to the end of suffering?
You take an interest in what's really going on — not a massive, noisy, exaggerated interest, but a quiet and small one. Just any level of interest that is actually real into the dynamics of suffering. This opens up your ability to see what's really going on.
You humble yourself, but not in a massive, noisy, exaggerated way, but in a quiet and small way. Just any level of humility about what you already understand about humanity. This opens up your ability to reassess the beliefs you already have.
Don't just play at it. Don't fake it, or try to cheat. Don't sit there, staring into space, hoping lightning will strike. Instead, get simple, try to make some sense of what's really going on.
What you want to do is try to get a new perspective on things, see things you haven't seen before about what's really going on with you, with yourself, with your suffering. If any of the perspectives you've seen for the first time in this piece have hit you hard, you can use that, and look afresh at what's really going on with suffering, with the mind, with thought, with the self.
Take a genuine interest, have a genuine look. It's very powerful if you really do it.
And then, when you see (maybe you are already) a whole new angle on life, something that cuts right through it… look at it. See how deep it is, how real. See how much sense it makes of things. See all of this.
Then let it fade, and watch it fade. And have faith enough that if it's real, you don't need to hold on to it.
That's the process, and I don't think it's wise to reduce it further than that.
And then, all of a sudden, you've done something very strange.
You've let go of something that is actually true. This is a very interesting thing, because most people would never do this. They would let go of falsehood (of course), but letting go of truth?
But then, let's just come back to the brain, for a second. The left hemisphere has no interest in true or false. It just doesn't care. But what it does care about is grasp. Holding on, grasping, grasping tighter to this idea or that, this person or that, this future or that, this life or that.
And how does this all relate to suffering? Does this allow you to let go of suffering as well?
Well, it's actually even simpler than that. Suffering is grasp. Releasing your grasp on truth undercuts suffering at the absolute core of what it fundamentally is. What is has evolved as, what it is in its nature.
This is the angle. A new way of handling truth, of reacting to it. Instead of (in the conventional, old way) grasping an idea tighter and tighter, the truer it seems, we're doing something totally different. Letting it go, the truer it seems.
And then all of a sudden, the puppet's string is cut. In letting go of real truth, because it is real, and needs no holding on to because of that fact, the right hemisphere cannot be held hostage by the left hemisphere. Cannot be hooked. Cannot be controlled, or contained, or ever again, held in thrall.
The letting go of truth, not because you've convinced yourself it isn't true, but because if it is true, you don't need to grip it for it to stay true.
Suffering, just like all things that the mind creates, has a half life, and quite a short one too. If you can let go of real truth, pain subsides. And there's no need to fight it, or beat it down, or find some clever way to get around it.
Pain is dying anyway. It's always dying. Just like insight, just like all things that are born, from the moment of their birth. The only thing that keeps it alive is the constant grasping. Release that, and you release pain.
Suffering evolved as the ‘go-to’ feeling for the display of self, because it lights up that display like a Christmas tree. But it is a slave to its nature, and the nature of that display is grasping. Grasp is the structure of it, the bones of the thing. Without that structure, it cannot exist.
Get real truth, then let go of real truth, and you can let go of anything. That small, simple flip of reversing your normal, old reaction to what is true opens up a whole new way of living. You don't have to suffer anymore. Nobody does.
It's not enough to simply say “let go of suffering.” We all want to let go of suffering. But you can't relax your grasp on grasp itself. This is the core mechanism that makes suffering so persistent.
Instead, relax your grip on truth — on real truth — and you can live free of the vast and terrible architecture of pain and lies, and all the misery they cause.