The Journey from Known to Unknown begins from the Inevitability of Loss

Truth is symbolically and synonymously associated with the word NAKED. To understand this metaphoric form, you have to understand why truth is associated with nakedness. When we say we are naked, what does it mean? It means that we are not masked or covered. Things are seen in clarity, and there is no veil in between. That doesn’t mean that we must roam literally naked or associate it with nudity.

Nakedness is connected to revelation or the enfolding of things which are seen AS IT IS, and this truth of our life is associated with us from the day we are born - naked.

There is a difference in nudity and understanding how truth is associated with nakedness. From this perspective, we are all born naked, and as NOTHING.

We develop our individuality knowingly or unknowingly through life experiences. We acquire various titles that develop within us a sense of identity and here we begin to identify with the things that surround us, the environment that we live in, and the experiences that we have, all these create lasting impressions on us. These various things lead us to develop a sense of identity and create an association with our individuality, which eventually creates the mask of identification, which becomes the first veil of personal knowledge. E.g if we are born into a rich family, the label of rich becomes our identification. Our physical sex can also become our identification, and this leads to another identification of gender roles that again leads us to presume and create identification of a set mind. Over time we keep accumulating, more and more labels and titles and weave a story around it based on the image of who and what we are identifying ourselves with. This story which takes shape within our minds eventually takes us on the path of truly understanding the beauty behind the inevitability of loss.

Every identification comes with its set of qualities that we all possess within us as a required skill to learn, to survive, to socialize, to build careers, etc. As per our knowledge and skills, we gather different powers and positions, albeit, in reality, no such power or position exists. It is a role that is given to us that we have to play on the stage of life, which is a gift given to us. In this process, the myriad experiences of life that we go through gives each person various expertise that help us to work in a domain that relates to the person’s experiential skills. Based on these skills we build our careers in our respective fields. We grow in our careers and are given higher designations which help us to achieve our goals in our material lives. Here is where we use these experiences to create false identification of our Ego.

Our ID, a part of our ego, generates a story around the word ‘ME’. Picture a situation where a manager has been made a Vice President, he fails to realize that the vice president is a role he needs to play to guide his team members by virtue of the knowledge that he has accumulated over the years. But, he begins to create a story not around the role designated to him, but around the position that has been given to him. Over time, he identifies with this position and fears losing it and becoming nothing.

This kind of fear creates more expectations within a person to protect many other titles that he has accumulated over time. But these are based on the foundation of the fear of loss. The fear of loss is, without the identification of the valued positions and labels, and without the title of ‘I’, he/she will be nothing. But as mentioned above, truth is nothing. This raises the question, who or what are we protecting? Are we protecting the titles that have no meaning or are we protecting the value that we see in other peoples’ eyes?

Life is ever-changing, and over time we all undergo a change in our lives, but alas we are unable to give up the stories that we have convinced ourselves to be true, at whatever stage we are in our lives. Unable to give up the stories, is a human folly to protect the ideology and beliefs, that our so-called stories are real. Although being real and having a reality check may be two sides of the same coin, they each come with different results. We agree that our stories do shape a part of our existent reality, so they are partly true, but at the same time, it is also a mask of illusion. Hence often in life, as our experiences change, so do our stories, then the question we need to ask ourselves is, if everything is transcending and is in transition what are we holding on to?

The most important question is, are we truly that with what we identify? The stories that we tell ourselves? Or are we more than that? Right here, begins the experience of existentialism, that not today or tomorrow we all have to face the inevitability of loss. Truth be told we are not just the stories that we tell ourselves, we have the capacity to be more. More than what we define ourselves to be. Through our existence and our upbringing, we look at the world around us, and believe that we should be either ‘this’ or ‘that’.

Each label enhances the fabrication of our identification, and the belief system kicks in where we start considering ourselves better or lesser than others. Foolishly driven by our desire to define everything around us. We are scared to lose these labels literally, for as a person, we do not know who we will be without the safety nets of these labels and identities, and so we hold on to these safety nets, on which our imaginations can land safely. A comfortable space within our mind that is familiar. Nowhere do we stop to think whether these various stories, titles, labels, and identities that we are trying so hard to protect are nothing but a figment of our imagination. Yet, it is so strong that it makes us believe that we are the makers and the creators of our life and reality. The nature of life is to keep changing and metamorphosing, but these stories and ideas that we weave in our imaginative mind unfortunately do not last our entire lifetime. A time comes when we are left with no choice but to outgrow the things that we believed to be true.

In our various experiences, the red flags which we have garnered are also overlooked, so in love we are with oneself – that we rather quarrel over perspectives put forth by others that may contrast with our own. Why else would we discount others' experiences to be false and try to increase the power of our knowledge, to the maximum level of grandiose that we have weaved within ourselves?

So in love, we are with the figment of our imagination, ideologies, and beliefs, in the frivolity of our human existence, that we hold this falsehood to be true in our minds. Right here our suffering begins.

 So Dear it becomes for one person shrouded - in his love for his image of him/herself - that any threat to it will make that person vicious and hateful. But we as humans who are on the journey of our life and transition, fail to realize that not today or tomorrow, we will face the inevitability of loss. We will lose all that we thought - we were, hold on to, and cherish.

We have been conditioned to believe in the permanence of all things in life without savouring the beauty of change. The idea of permanence, that all things must last a lifetime, makes it harder for us to accept change.

The beauty of life lies in understanding the inevitability of loss. At some point, we will lose all that we thought would last a lifetime. It could be a physical loss a psychological one, or both. Permanence leads us humans to take things for granted and so it creates immense agony even to think that we will lose it.

Loss is associated with negative connotations over time. However, let’s look into the beauty of loss. Loss essentially is impermanence, the lack of any aspect being permanent in life. This goes against all that we have ever been conditioned to believe. But the beauty of impermanence is flexibility, agility, change, growth, learning, newness, and adaptability. When we realize the impermanence of our lives, we learn to be flexible in life, we learn to adjust to the changing situation around the world, we learn to adapt to things that are current, letting go of the things that no longer are needed and required. We are therefore constantly in the form of metamorphosis.

A butterfly metaphorically is a symbol of metamorphosis, but it can do it only once in its lifetime. The beauty of human existence is that it gives every human being the power to undergo this process as many times as they would like. How many butterflies can we be in just one lifetime? This very thought makes life worth living. The fear of loss holds us to our various attachments and expectations when simply the path of acceptance can liberate us. So strong is the fear around the stories that we have weaved around our conscious mind, that losing all that we know, we feel, the so-called reality that has shaped us till now, the associations with our friends, families, our myriad experiences and the results that we have sensed, that we fail to realize that there are many things that we still don’t know and yet have to experience. Not merely experience the existence of life, but also to include the existentialism of life. In short, the unknown reality of human existence that we have not yet experienced creates a feeling of dread to tread the path towards the unknown and hence we continue to hold on to what is familiar to us even though we may know the truth somewhere deep inside, that we are holding on to outdated realities, existence, personalities, and imaginations.

To understand the beauty of the inevitability of loss is to lose ourselves so that we can reach our highest potentiality. Truth therefore is naked; and to allow that loss to shape our lives and take us to a part within ourselves that we yet do not know, is the only choice we can ever make.

As always with love and warm light~