By Ben Jones, author of “Ash and Truth (The Path of Ash)“
We often hear that self-image is a limitation, an egoic belief, or a distraction to true self-knowing. While this can be true, at the same time, the images we create or perceive of ourselves, our dreams, our desires, or our expressions, can be ways in which our true nature finds its way into form.
While this true nature can be said to be formless, empty, ever-present. Nevertheless, the perception of a human life, with its accompanying images while not fundamental – is not a separate and distinct experience, but that same formlessness expressing itself.
For this reason, our image is important. It is a sort of imprint which guides us to take the steps and follow the joys which our life desires. Not to become anything, but to express what is already taking form.
In my book, Ash and Truth, after the main character leaves the town, the crowd, the world – to seek after the truth which echoes through his being – he encounters a void.
A bridge across this void connects his present path with what he seems to have left behind.
On this bridge, he sees his own image, smiling at him. He meets it, and in doing so, merges with it. The void is no longer a separate void, but the smiling source of himself.
When he meets this image over the void, he is meeting not only his source but his expression; not only his true being but his true play.
Though our images are influenced by the false beliefs of the world, when we truly have the courage to turn towards our empty, void-like being, we find that our images are not destroyed, but renewed.
Our true images can then shine through, less distorted by false identities and roles, and guide us towards our truest expressions.
Hence, the main character realises later in his journey: “the imagination of self-image is not illusion; it is the way we meet the indelible imprints of our uniqueness, and let them sprawl out into form.”
THE ONE WHOSE CLOTHES NEVER TRULY VEILED THEIR BODY
When you find yourself imagining who you may be, how you may act, or even how you may dress or look – instead of indulging in these dreams, or poo-pooing them away in the belief they are merely egoic desires – let the images reveal to you your deeper desires. How does it feel to imagine yourself that way? If it feels exciting, grounded, joyful, is this a reverberating echo calling? Is it a remembrance, rather than a premonition – a remembrance of who or how you are beneath whatever you may have gathered along the way? Does this image resonate with your childhood self? If so, is it calling you to re-embrace joys which, as an adult seemingly burdened by ‘adult’ things – you believed you must leave behind?
What if our true path is not a new, shiny, or even successful endeavour. What if it is the one we stepped off in order to seek an imagined future role? What if our true path is much simpler than a grand discovery, a new endeavour, or a previously unexplored pursuit? What if, in a search for our passion, we forget the passions which were always with us? What if simply taking that simple step – as we did as a child – towards what we enjoy, is the boldest, most powerful move we could make?
What if life left clues for us along the way?
Would a loving parent wish for their child’s happiness to be dependent on one endeavour, one pursuit, one passion, one milestone? Or would they wish, deep down, that all endeavours, pursuits, passions or milestones the child encounters or takes on are simply more expressions of its happiness? – a happiness which is ever-present.
“Your task,” says Rumi (loosely quoted!) “is not to seek for love, but to seek and find all those barriers which declare its seeming absence.”
Similarly, we don’t discover our true desires, passions, or paths; they emerge from beneath the tangled vines of outgrown beliefs – still intact, like ancient roads preserved beneath the forest.
Our task is not to scour the forest high and low for signs of ourselves, for that forest is a maze of the world’s false ideas and projections. Our task is only to recognise the dead branches which cover the ground, see the false projections as they unravel, so the joy of a child is revealed.
This in itself is not another goal, or future desire. It is a listening to the echo of our own imprint.
To return to the character in the book, at some point after his initial encounter with the void, he finds himself facing this simple truth. He sought nakedness – to be free of everything he had gathered – yet he had also made this a goal, one which his true freedom and happiness seemed to depend on. In realising this he comes to a point of simple return –
‘Was nakedness a goal, a worthy pursuit, a requirement for one who sought the peaks? No, it was the innocence of the boy which lived within him; it was the simplicity and bareness of now. It wasn’t an attainment one reached after unclothing from a tiresome day of work – it was the one who woke, who worked, who slept, who breathed; the one whose clothes never truly veiled their body.’
While what we gather seems to clothe us, and while our life seems to be waiting – at times – to begin: our clothes never truly veiled our body. Our fears and beliefs never truly eroded our joy. Nor did the road we stepped on as a child – or perhaps for just that one moment we felt truly alive and happy – ever fade beneath the soil and foliage of duty, trauma or beliefs.
When searching for our path we need not look in the exhilarating nights, or the giddy ventures. Even if these may play a part in it, they are passing steps. The path is not the step, it is not even the lines which the steps follow, nor the ground they walk on. The path is the one who dreamed of joy before dreaming of a future became a necessity. The path is the one whose images and ideas were already formed in full, before a world told it that those images need to grow and evolve. The path is the one who ‘wakes, works, sleeps, breathes: the one whose clothes never truly veiled their body’.