The term “giving up” often carries a sad, powerless connotation. Victimy, weak and even passive-aggressive, the dead-energy uttering of a dramatically timed, “I give up” (or even worse “OKAY, I give up”) isn’t generally a powerful declaration.
But the truth may be that giving up could be the most empowering thing we as human animals could do.
Let me explain.
Generally speaking, human understanding is about, uh, human understanding. Which is about the brain and its data collecting and pattern sorting abilities. Ah the problems with this: where to begin?! The “data” we think we collect via observation and experience is highly suspect, to say the least. Study after study enumerates blind-spots and imaginings galore when it comes to what we remember and how we remember it. While necessary for survival, the patterns the brain “discerns”, or thinks it does, are often flimsily concocted gestalt fill-ins or errors of attribution which unconsciously solidify into beliefs and programs that determine how we live our lives. Problems, all, to those of us who are running on the assumption that our human brain-based understanding is reliable. Our lives are built on this assumption.
Oh and those studies... Sure, the reason for studies is to really look at these things we think we see and know and test those assumptions—which is admirable and important in its way, if uncontaminated by bias of any kind, corporate, individual or just human biased. I’m not saying ignore science, there’s lots of great stuff there if we can get to it.
But that’s not what I’m referring to here—I’m getting to it.
Mostly, we can count on our perceptual systems to keep us from falling off a cliff, feeding the organism, etc., etc. Survival stuff. It runs on its own (it’s just us messing up this self-organizing system called Life with our brain-junk that off-balances it).
Which is closer to what I’m talking about.
The problem is that we think we know.
And we don’t.
Again, I’m not talking about survival stuff, about moment-to-moment functioning. About what’s right in front of us. I’m talking about everything else.
We think we know about ourselves and our lives—what we like and don’t like, what we need, what we don’t. But we know only about our characters. We know only about our personas, the coping mechanism we built to not get hurt anymore, to get what we thought we needed to survive.
We don’t know about who we really are.
Who we really are is only Life happening NOW, and is unknowable in the way we think it is, which is about computation, prediction and consistency.
The essence of Life is Here and only Here.
Everything else is an imagining, whether it’s about the past or the future (no matter), it only occurs in our brains. We have no understanding, because our brains, when not simply functioning in this moment, are just in a dream that we think is real. We bring concepts and ideas into this now, thinking they are real, solid things.
…They are blinders.
To open to now is to give up knowing. To give up agenda. To give up the ideas (and they are only ideas) of past and future.
Give up.
It’s not even a thing.
“Give up” is a term that if we really look at it, doesn’t make any literal sense. It implies letting go of holding on to something we own or have dominion over. Giving up. It’s a concept. Fluff. A thought. Nothing. We are giving up nothing. The illusion of control. The illusion of knowing and understanding. These illusions make our little coping mechanism—our small self— feel safe; that’s what they’re for. Reflect on how many times you thought you understood something, only to realize later you didn’t understand it at all, or replaced it with a new understanding. Perception. Stories. Lies. Deceptions. Understanding. It’s all the same.
None of it exists.
To give up the idea that I think I can know what’s possible in the next moment is to enter into absolute freedom.
It’s actually impossible to give up Here and Now, which is the only thing that’s ever actually here. We can’t. But we can think we can know what’s going to happen, what’s possible, who we are, and miss, my friends, what’s really and truly here.
It’s the subtlest con of all time, to think we can know. It will steal, is stealing, your life. Worse, it deceives you into giving up your life for an idea that never was, could never be, true.
A more apt definition of give up might be to offer up. To offer our attention up (isn’t that all we have to give, really?) to what’s happening here. To reality.
And really live.
Now. Everything is Here. Now. Always.
That’s all that can ever be known. I give up everything else.