Transcend the world?

It's a snowy cold day in early March where I live and I am none too thrilled about my potential participation with the world today, which won't amount to much.  I have a small job scheduled with a customer this afternoon.  That'll take roughly 30 minutes. I suppose I could do some advertising or pay bills, but what I'd really like, is a challenge.  That's one of the downsides to awakening.  I live in a strangely content perpetual state of boredom.  Imagine Spiderman with no bad guys to catch.  That's me.  It's my own damn fault.  When you've so-called transcended the world this tends to happen.
I've always wondered what exactly does to transcend the world...or...to be in the world but not of it...mean?. I think I now know, but it's hard to reconcile my own experience with the writings of pundits and religionists. It seems that ninety nine percent of the nitwits who have ever spouted this hackneyed new age cliché are full to their eyeballs with religious  hootenanny and are just regurgitating 12th generation gossip in order to sell books, weekend workshops, and club spirituality memberships. Then, there are jackasses like myself , who've realized enlightenment, and look back on all those pithy little zen one-liners and gag. 

Enlightenment is not about transcending the world.  It's about being here in the world one hundred percent.   Enlightenment plops you down in this beautiful crappy world, through the vessel of your beautiful crappy body,  in a way that you could never have imagined. It puts you in the very front seat of a roller coaster with no safety harness, no wind shield, and no brakes.  What indeed does get transcended is the egoic sense of separation and unhappiness which has hitherto poisoned your mind, emotions, and body for lifetimes...assuming of course you believe in reincarnation.  I suppose I could say I am not of this world.  But what I would mean. is that I am not of the world of ego and all of its overly serious implications.  I got no religion.  Trees, rocks, rivers, fish, clouds, mountains, sky, stars...those are my gods.  And even they, I would not hesitate to slay on the altar of transcendence, should they obscure my view of freedom. In the end, I am a little boy doing cartwheels in the playground of eternity. 

Return to Jeff's writings