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Cory Edmund Endrulat

There Is Nothing To Do, But Everything Gets Done



Inspired By Ancient Taoism


There needs not be anything to write about. Nor anything to do. All there is, is to be. And the reason why, is because it is the only thing we have control of, it's the only thing we are sure of and it allows us to be sure, to have control, since we may become immersed. For instance, you may be at a theme park, you can think about all the things you need to do next and you can plan it all out. If things don't go according to plan, you get upset, and you may end up rushing or you try to make everything work around the plan, but nothing ever really seems to go as planned. Nature cannot be planned, it cannot be managed. However, as we are part of nature, we can manage ourselves. And we often externalize this management or think so in the future, that we don't enjoy the moment of now, we don't give to ourselves. We give to desire, identity, labels, attachments or other people and material things.


Every spiritual teaching shares a common ground around this sense, and it is no surprise; it helps us realize nature. The beautiful thing about nature is that it tends to always keep people present. Whether by teaching people their lesson, or providing natural landscapes that can mostly only be enjoyed in the present moment. Whether speaking of Food Forests or Natural Law as the only solution, it is nature. Furthermore, when it comes to nature, it is unifying around the world and it isn't judged by humans, as much as humans may judge themselves or other humans. It is a shared commonality. Yet, we miss the point that we too are part of nature, and everyone is, thus we are part of everyone. It would be easy at this point to dismiss our material things and say that they are merely a product of nature and that we should not worry about them, but the problem is that we forget the point of their existence. We get so wrapped in their existence, when nature ever gave rise to their existence in the first place. In other words, we live by the symptoms but not the roots. So do we expect to have answers? Do we expect to know of our whole world? In another sense, we merely create illusions of the natural world, we create distractions or blockades of the natural world, and these are our creations. Again, the premises of a natural world is that of origin, what allows the man made thing to come into being.


We want to know our origin, yet all we see around us is things we've created, and then we wonder why we don't know. We want to be happy, yet all the time we want to be happy, and we wonder why we aren't happy. We say we want people to be left alone, and then we say we want select individuals to have "authority" and create laws for others backed by the threat of violence, and then we wonder why people aren't being left alone. Why do we live in contradiction? It's almost as if we don't see our own mentality. And it would be easy not to see something, if you are looking somewhere else; as is with the case of ourselves not living presently. If we were listening to a song, do we listen only for the end? We listen to be present, in order truly to enjoy the song.


Now, if we look at movies and television, and we look at scary or hardship based films, which indeed are plenty, what percentage of the movie or show is actually the good ending, the solution based part; we may say around 1 to 5 percent of the movie. We may even not know if it’s a movie, and take the man made creation as nature itself. We could argue and say that we are immersed, but regardless, we could also say that the hardships are not taken into real life, that we know it is a film; however, if most of the film is of the nature of some sense of hardship or fear or other negative emotion, do we not think this brings into ourselves some sense of conditioning? Some sense of desensitization? Like the movie, we live in hardship and expect a good result in the end. We sit and watch, with expectation. But the problem is, aside from expectation, humankind is much more active than this in the real world, as equally as much as more passive. We want to change the world to be part of the movie in the active sense, but at the same time, we want to be in the movie in the passive sense. Never do we think of not being in the movie at all. The world is a show especially if people partake in rituals they are told to partake in, and then they are given specific instructions on how to do so. Controlled by others, by things, by identities and so on. But remember, the movie or show is our creation. Outside of it, would be the origin, it would be nature, ever more whole and unifying. Thus, to escape the trap and become present, to be authentic and honest, we would not partake in the movie and we would live a life that cannot quite be detailed, as life needs no writing, truth cannot be written. Thus by accepting what has already been written into nature, we need not write; thus, there is nothing to do but rather to go; everything will flow where it must, because nature is everything. Boy, what a movie or book we may create without even trying.

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