Everything in the universe is constantly in flux. Everyone is constantly changing every second of every day. There is never a moment that someone is exactly the same as the moment before no matter how finely I slice the moments. So a consistent identity is impossible. I can let go of the idea that the person in front of me is the same person as any past “them.”
All it does is lock in a story. A good story can be a fun way to spend my time, but if it ever stops being fun, I can return to the truth. And the only truth is now.
Everyone is newly born every instant. Every razor-thin moment is its own entirely self-contained existence with no past, no future and no separation - whole, complete and perfect without its imaginary “continuation” which is nothing more than an ephemeral game of the mind - a fun game to play when I know it’s not real.
I find that when I identify someone as the same person they were yesterday, I limit what they can do with me today, and what I can do with them. I am not free to respond out of my loving true nature to the reality of their present being. Instead, I’m shackled to a dream. I have to say yes or no because of how that dream meets the standards of this moment. I do all kinds of mental gymnastics to keep them locked in a consistent identity within a constantly changing universe from which they are never separate.
All of it is unnecessary.
We are completely free. We are only this. Now.
The only thing another person can ever be is a localized moment of an ever-shifting universe that is perfectly in balance with itself.
Mistaking their true nature, I keep trying to make them stand still, to hold back the tide, to anchor them in quicksand, to convince myself that they are always be THIS shape of smoke, THIS plume of fire.
Hopeless.
I cannot stop people from flowing. There is no way to do it without inventing and maintaining an elaborate lie. When it’s peaceful, I can do it, but when it stops being peaceful, I can let go and let people keep flowing.
When my suffering becomes overwhelming, violent thinking can emerge. But to return to my own peace, there’s no need to do anything to another person, only to let go of the idea that it’s possible for this person to have a consistent identity. Every identity I assign another person as is already “dead” the moment I notice it. Gone. Changed to this now. Which is gone in place of this. And this. And now this…
Isn’t ‘the end of the person who hurt me’ all violence is trying to accomplish? Well, it has already happened. Because it is always happening.
Everyone is always beginning again, always born into a newfound peace with me, if only I’ll allow it.
Everyone is always new unless I’m torturing myself with the impossible, imaginary need to keep them the person they were before. Who WAS that person? A beautiful, love-worthy person from another place and time, doing the absolute best they could with what they were thinking and believing, and who is not the person in front of me now.
I can just let go of the fiction of a consistent identity the way I let go of the fiction of a video game character.
Fun while it’s fun, but OVER the instant it’s not.
Oh, and by the way: