Arguing With Reality
About Arguing with Reality
Mystics, shamans, and sages through time have said that, as humans, we are seeking one thing: freedom. Suffering traps us, fear traps us, worry, regret, envy, impatience, self-deprecation, greed, cynicism, guilt: all traps.
We spend enormous effort “seeking” wisdom - chasing Spirit. But the secret is to remember that Spirit is the most radically free thing that we can imagine. It has no personality, no social or personal desires, no past and future, so it has no traps. What it has, apparently - to this small human mind contemplating it - is radical, immeasurable curiosity.
Rather than seeking the next pearl of wisdom to swallow, hoping that it will cure my doubt and transform my frustration, I may be better off placing my attention on how to become free of the traps that I love to put my legs and arms into (so that I can complain about being trapped). Becoming free is the primary act of merging with Spirit.
I am palpably aware of how much I love to be trapped, because it gives me a great story to tell about how the world has treated me poorly and how I don’t deserve that. And yet, I can also feel the waft of that radical freedom around me all the time, especially when the really fine teachers speak of it so clearly, and when I do some practices that take me there for a few moments or for a little longer.
One secret that I understand with my higher mind, but still resist with my lower mind, is what Tara Brach calls “Radical Acceptance” (Source: her book by that same name)
"Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is... The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to what we can free… What would it be like if I could accept life--accept this moment--exactly as it is?”
When we argue with reality—thinking "this shouldn't be happening," "I shouldn't feel this way," or "they shouldn't be like that"—we add a layer of mental suffering on top of whatever pain is already there. Accepting everything "just as it is" simply means acknowledging the present moment as a fact. I am trying to track in my language and thought - how often do I repeat those phrases, and how much energy do spend arguing with reality.? This has been a good and challenging practice.
The masters say that once you stop expending your energy fighting the reality of what is, you open the peace of mind to act with genuine wisdom.
What "Just as It Is" Actually Means
The late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh said that to create real peace, you must first have peace inside yourself, which first requires accepting the world as it is, without judgement, without condemnation, without arguing with reality. Judgement creates the trap, made of emotion. If you need to change a flat tire, first you need to accept that the tire is flat, then you need to cease the swearing about how crappy it is to have a flat tire. Then you are free to transform reality. I like this, and I’m working on integrating it as much as I can.
Last night
I sat under the calmest full moon
Surrounded by a luminous silver haze
And for a moment
An eternal moment I want to say
The moon said
Everything is as it must be.
My failures became honey
And that squeaking hamster wheel of corrosive thoughts
Became one long pun.
The moon reminded me that
puns are the lowest form of humor.
In that moment I heard the night say
Something along the lines of this:
The absurdity has come to help you focus.
The ludicrous has come to help you choose what you love most.
The insane has come to help you become sane,
After so long.
Everything is as it must be.
A man in the jungle once told me the plants come alive at night
And sing to each other
Without the interference
Of all that light
And all that sight.
The heart hears what the eyes obscure.
There is but one being
And it calls the galaxies
And the cells into one song.
Everything is as it must be.
- Jaime Meyer, 2026. Feel free to share.