Vachon Imagined

Everything is evolving.

People who fight for the environment are often fighting to preserve something that is already changing, already moving, already becoming something else. We imagine that if we fight hard enough, we can hold life in place.

But life does not stay in place.

This is why the person with a clear conscience, the person who walks only in mind, walks in the light.

There is no tomorrow here. There is no history here. There is no self here.

And if there is no self, there is nothing to protect.

Freedom becomes possible because there is nothing to defend.

The only reason human beings fight is because we believe there is a self that must be protected. We become attached to an identity, an idea, a place, a person, a belief—and then we defend it as though it were permanent.

And because human beings are extraordinarily good at projecting themselves onto the world, we do the same thing with everything else.

We fight for rainforests. We fight for animals. We fight to preserve species, ecosystems, institutions, traditions, ideas. But evolution was already happening before we arrived, and it will continue after we are gone.

We are not nearly as powerful as we imagine ourselves to be.

We cannot even stop ourselves.

We cannot eliminate violence simply by creating more laws. We cannot eliminate suffering simply by creating more programs. We cannot eliminate what we call insanity or mental illness simply by creating another treatment, another drug, another system of control.

Why?

Because the possibility already existed.

That does not mean everything is permanent. It means only that it exists.

A possibility does not become permanent simply because it exists. It becomes part of what life can experience.

Much like our genetic code, life contains possibilities we did not consciously choose. We inherit conditions, tendencies, limitations, capacities. Yet none of that means we are trapped by them.

It means only that they are available to experience.

And this is where we misunderstand time.

People who walk in time do not have a history, because they are not living behind themselves. And they do not have a future, because they are not living ahead of themselves.

They are here.

There is no other place to be.

They are in life because there is nothing else.

And when there is nothing else, there is nothing but life.

Nothing but love.

Nothing but liberty.

Nothing but freedom for the person willing to lay down their understanding long enough to receive a greater one—a much deeper one.

We cannot do this alone.

But we were never meant to.

We have an ally: our life.

Not someone else’s life. Not an ideology. Not a book. Not a system of belief.

Our individual experience of being alive is our teacher.

I am the teacher.

You are the teacher.

Mind is the teacher.

And you are the greatest subject you will ever encounter.

Every experience is teaching you how to walk in the light.

And if you need to slow down in order to enter another consciousness, it is already possible. You do not have to force your way there.

You are simply moving into it by choice.

And the movement becomes freer when you stop calling it I.

Stop calling it you.

Stop calling it other.

Because the moment we name ourselves as separate things, we begin to believe there is something to protect.

And where there is nothing to protect, there is nothing to fight.

So when you become offended, upset, angry, or feel yourself about to explode, do not fight the feeling.

Stop the story attached to it.

The feeling is moving.

The experience is moving.

Life is moving.

Let it evolve.

What happened was already happening. It was already moving before you created a story about what it meant, who was responsible, what should have happened, or what must happen next.

The question is not:

How do I stop this?

The question is:

Am I allowing life to pass through me, or am I interfering with its movement?

Because the moment we attach ourselves to the story, we begin trying to control what was already moving.

We turn an experience into an identity.

We turn a moment into a history.

We turn a possibility into a future.

And then we fight to protect it.

But life does not need our protection.

It needs our participation.

Walk in time.

Let what is already moving, move.

All we have to do is get out of the way.