RIDING THE BICYCLE

RIDING THE BICYCLE
OR
ME & MOSES


Remember, if you can, that moment before you learned how to ride a bicycle. It looked impossible to achieve balance on two round wheels. Some of us got little trainer wheels to attach to the back wheel but that only prolonged the infancy of learning how to ride a bike. Most of us had to fall a few times before that magic moment when, voila’, you discovered a balance you’d never forget.

Once you’ve achieved that balance, you always have it, never forget it. You no longer need trainer wheels. Besides slowing you down they’re no longer necessary. A lot like Moses and his 10 commandments. Once you’ve mastered the first commandment, you don’t need the rest. They were only training wheels for spiritual and social infancy.

What the first commandment really means is there is nothing here but God. There is nothing there but God. There is no not God, there is only God. The rest of what’s going on here is just false ownership, praise or blame; simply bullshit.

The remaining “thou shalt nots” are all conditional and not absolutes. “Don’t kill” unless the ruling junta gives you license doesn’t sound like an All-Powerful God’s command to me. Don’t even think naughty thoughts. That’s inhuman and impossible. And who decides what’s naughty and nice when Santa Claus, like God, is a doubtful concept.
Take David and Bathsheba. No adultery, no Solomon. You figure it out.

This screwy Moses system is a mind game that manufactures guilt-pain by the bucket full. Mature folks learn that in this dualistic world of yin & yang, right & wrong, good & evil, etc. that there are no truly straight lines. Up close everything is crooked. The shortest distance between two points is a curve. The straight line is an abstract concept that the mature mind accepts as something not attainable in this world. Close but no cigar.

So how does one learn to live in this world, follow a righteous path, without the trainer wheels of the last 9 commandments. It’s a lot like learning how to ride a bicycle. You stop judging yourself and others and you achieve balance. You can slip and fall and call yourself or another “asshole” which is anatomically correct but stops you both in your tracks.

Balance is another way of saying harmony. No one is alone in this world. We’re all surrounded by stuff. Learning to ride this dualistic, two-wheeled world is simply being in harmony with the way things are at this moment, this holy instant. When you step back from your notions of how things should be, you can actually see the way things really are. All of a sudden, voila, you have achieved balance, harmony and are at peace. Once you learn this lesson, you will never forget. You may occasionally fall but still can get back up.

Simply, Simon