Being Lost

"For he who finds his life will lose it; while he who loses his life shall find it." -- The Bible, Matthew 10:39

"The master never reaches for the great; thus she achieves greatness. When she runs into a difficulty, she stops and gives herself to it. She doesn't cling to her own comfort; thus problems are no problem for her... she has nothing, and thus has nothing to lose." -- The Tao te Ching

Being lost is not a topic that will attract hordes of people. We really, really, really abhor the thought of being lost. We really, really, really look down on ourselves and others who are 'aimless' or don't seem to know who they are and what they are supposed to do with themselves. The world reveres the defined structure and orderly progression, both in institutions and in people. But why did Jesus, Lao Tsu, Buddha, and every other spiritual adept stress the losing of one's self as pretty much a prerequisite for enlightenment? They were pointing to a universal phenomenon, one that we literally have no control over.

As a musician I have an example. Unless I am willing to lose myself in a song, it will never be truly sung. Unless an instrumentalist is willing to lose himself in the group and in the music itself, the music will fall flat. There is a sublimation of the individual that has to occur for the universal to reveal itself. Not sublimation as in sacrifice... the truth is, the individual is pretty much an optical illusion of consciousness anyway. We can dissect a musical score and define the individual parts and pretend each one has autonomy, and even enjoy the intellectual exercise of it along the way... but the truth is that none of it means anything except as a whole. The relationships that exist in the musical score only have meaning within the whole. In just this way, all our individual selves are simply mental constellations of ideas, constructs that have no meaning unless we widen back to see it all from the big Self, the Self in which we live and move and have our Being.

Jesus and Lao Tsu were giving us practical advice. When we are caught up in the details of our lives from the individual perspective, we are lost in the maze, even when there appear to be no problems. We are living what Albert Einstein called "an optical delusion of consciousness." And so we have 'lost' the awareness of our true Self. When we are willing to let go of the individual, to let go of believing that we are separate and alone, we find our true Self revealed in everyone and everything. And as Lao Tsu said, then problems are no real problem!