Buddhism 103: Riding the Bike Behind the Waterfall

I certainly don't mean to suggest that I am enlightened in any way. I honestly don't think I know or have experienced enough to be qualified to determine if I am enlightened or not or to what degree I may be down the path, and given that fact, any consideration that I may be enlightened seems much closer to arrogance than to acknowledgment of truth. But the truth is I don't particularly care, and I think that is also kind of the point. To seek enlightenment is a desire itself. Enlightenment is not the goal; presence is the goal. Enlightenment is just the label we have applied to the experience of nothingness, no different than "rising"-"falling", "in"-"out", "lifting"-"placing"-"stepping". What I do know is that I am fundamentally different than I was six months ago, even three months ago, and different in an irreversible way. Living behind the waterfall is an appropriate analogy, but I resonate more with my analogy for getting to be behind the waterfall: riding the bike.

Anyone who has ever learned how to ride a bicycle remembers the experience of the moment in which it clicked, the moment when the hurdle of the required sense of balance was overcome and the balance became entrenched in one's consciousness in a way that could be recalled again and again anytime they wanted to ride. Short of physical brain trauma, you can't unlearn how to ride a bike. Your consciousness is fundamentally changed with the new experience. And that is the sentiment I relate to. I feel like I am riding a bike. I see my own consciousness in a way that I did not before, that is now as obvious to me as the nose on my face, or perhaps more appropriately as my own breathing. For me, there is no "asshole voice", as Dan Harris would put it; no personal Satan, as I have called it in the past. There is only the nature of consciousness, and an imperfect process called evolution developed consciousness to be the imperfect experience we perceive every day. Sometimes it creates scenarios that are just debilitating, but now that I can see and sense and feel - and yes, sometimes it is so vivid that it is almost feeling on a physical level - the process by which my consciousness just does its thing and creates something seductively misrepresentative of reality, I can simply non-attach from it or block the attachment in the first place. Sometimes riding a bike is smooth, sometimes it is choppy, some rides require a lot more balance than other rides. I have balance now. There is no malicious intent nor fault (hence, no asshole or Satan); it just is. Behind the waterfall is a place or state of being in relation to our thoughts; riding the bike is how we get from the waterfall to behind it.

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