Most of what's going on in the universe is a secret. That sounds so far away, and yet most of what is going on in my body right now, in my mind is also in secret, not only to you, but to me. My heart continues beating, pumping blood through my body, and a community of millions of cells quietly go about their business of keeping 'me' going.
We live with the illusion that we know what's going on around us, that 'they' know who I am, what we're doing. We go into meetings thinking that we all know what we're talking about, that we understand each other, and yet most of what is in our minds remains a secret.
And when we do connect with each other, how that information is transferred, how it creates the reality in my brain is also a secret, a mystery.
I was sitting at an airport recently. No-one knew me. Very few people even spoke my language. To some I was a tourist who's bag needed wrapping, to some I was this stranger buying stuff with money that I didn't understand and they spoke slower in Spanish, so that perhaps by some miracle I would understand. and when I left the memory of me would vanish into the stream of people the same way the drops of water in a river is constantly disappearing before our eyes, without us noticing, because all we see is this continuous stream of water.
And then to the customs official I was a drug smuggler. I looked the part having just spent days in the mountains, unshaven, tanned, grubby clothes, traveling alone with a backpack. At least that is how it seems, but what was really on his mind was a secret, as was what was on mine. It was my secret that I was a seeker, a traveller, a magician, a father, a husband, a musician, a thinker - all of the ways I see myself, but to him I was a suspect. And when, to his surprise, he found nothing I wonder what I became and whether I will ever be remembered by him and the cute translator who interrogated me. That too is a secret.
And this is the question - does anything really exist, because everything in the Universe is dependent on everything else. Do I really exist except for the image of me that is in the mind of those who love me, and the memories I have of who I am, where I've been and these thoughts that have a life of their own.
So perhaps the key is to hold it all lightly, to realize that nothing really exists apart from everything else. That reality is what we create every moment, this moment, the only moment there ever is. The echoes of the secret past and the anticipation of a secret future all constantly being created and forgotten, right now.
