The secret all things know

The dawning in my heart of the great secret was an unclenching of a lifetime’s clinging.

I sat there on the forest floor, draped in the silence, in the emptiness, in the fullness of God. I gazed lovingly upon a little pine tree, barely two feet in height.

“You don’t matter,” I said frankly to its tiny emerald body, a glimmer of understanding beginning to shine through the cracks of my soul.

It stood there, silently, its roots clutching the dense earth as it gently danced in the breeze. It danced...taunting me.

I repeated my utterance, more forcefully this time. “You don’t matter.”

As I sat quietly, I felt the silence of God coursing through me, and a wave of truth crashed upon me. Without a moment of thought, I cocked my head back, my face reaching towards the golden sun, and I let out a guttural cackle.

I laughed and laughed for what seemed like hours. I laughed like a madman, making no mind that I was talking to a tree.

“You don’t matter,” I pointed at the tree, laughing, “And I don’t matter...I don’t matter!” I pointed at myself, grinning stupidly.

I cracked again, thunderous laughter bellowing from deep in my belly, “I don’t matter!”

I looked back at my bristly friend, who stood silently, almost as though waiting for me to see what was so plainly obvious. No response. I was puzzled.

“You don’t matter!” I laughed. “I don’t matter!” I giggled. “Nothing matters!” I chuckled. “Not even God matters!” I howled. 

Then, suddenly, it dawned on me. I looked the tree square in the needles.

“But you already knew that.”

The young tree shook with delight.

“You’ve always known that. And that is why your heart will never depart from God.”

I sat back, eyeing my woody friend, and I began to ponder out loud.

I pondered about how all people are taught to believe that we matter. That our feelings matter. That our beliefs matter. That our thoughts, our problems, our opinions, our politics, our experiences, our actions, our sons, our daughters, our lovers, our friends, our lives...that they all matter. That everything matters.

I told the tree of how this inherited clinging is precisely the reason human hearts are imprisoned. The free, liberated hearts we come into this world knowing, they clench and close under the weight of all the mattering. And we find ourselves desperately searching for meaning — for purpose.

We feel abandoned by God when God does not intervene in our lives in a way that suits our clinging.

“Don’t I matter?” We whisper to God in those desperate moments. “I must matter,” we answer in God’s silence, not quite believing our own assurance.

“But, deep down,” I told the tiny tree, “we know the truth: that we don’t matter.” 

That nothing matters...not us nor the trees nor the birds nor the soil nor the stars. But we are the ones who have forgotten.

We’ve forgotten the pure joy, the pure freedom, the pure liberation of this knowing. We’ve forgotten what it feels like to realize and accept this truth in our hearts. We’ve forgotten what it feels like to be one with all things...to be one with God.

It’s only when we fully accept this truth in our hearts that our clinging can finally be absolved.

I gazed back upon the tree, which quivered freely and merrily in the chilled autumn wind, the breath of God blowing between its branches. Drinking the rays of God’s sun, and, all the while, knowing the truth: that none of it matters.

God, too, knows this truth. For God is this truth. God is neither a thing to be worshipped nor proselytized...but something to be experienced within our liberated hearts.

For even God knows that God doesn’t matter. That nothing matters.

“This, friend, is true humility,” I smiled at the sapling, holding the sweetness of this remembered knowing in my heart.

I finally understood what the old mystics so often giggled about — the secret they seemed to know but could not share. Though it’s not that they didn’t try...we just couldn’t hear it.

“But I do matter,” our egos would retort to their truth in frustration, our shackled hearts growing heavier.

But the devious, childlike twinkle in the eyes of the mystics — in the eyes of every child  — is the secret we have forgotten. The secret that all things know. That nothing matters, not even God. And all of it is absolutely perfect.

The small tree, my new friend, with this secret in its ligneous heart, continued to dance and quake in its joyous freedom. The only true freedom there is.