Nobody wants to be ordinary, and when you really think about it, this is the seed of all human madness—the idea that we have to be something other than ordinary.
And just think about it. There’s really only two possibilities to be other than ordinary.
Either you’re better than or you’re worse than. Some of us use our worse than beliefs to actually be better than. Like, “I’m the saddest person ever. I’m the dumbest person ever. I’m the biggest failure.” I mean, sometimes we can be just completely mad about it, right? Insane. “I am the most humble person ever”—one of my most favorite jokes. But this is the seed of just what makes us crazy.
Can you imagine one of the trees in the forest not wanting to be ordinary? No, it’s just a tree in the forest.
When we allow this madness to consume us, then that’s what we call unenlightenment. That is duality in a nutshell. The nondual experience of life is that everything just is.
I am that I am.
I am that.
Everything just is—its own whatever. Qualities, interactions, interconnectedness—all just goes along smoothly together.
One wonderful thing about ordinariness is that when you’re completely ordinary, you feel like you belong, and everything else belongs. Then the universe is a dynamic, living experience of all consciousness moving together. Then all the animals and the plants are part of this experience of unity together. Some things are bigger than others, some things are smaller than others, but everything belongs. So literally, ordinariness and belonging are the same kind of concept.
Maybe you could call it the same worldview—the worldview of ordinariness. When you’re ordinary, you just simply fit in, and everything else fits in as well.
So why do we have this desire to not be ordinary—to be something other than ordinary?
As far as I can tell, it’s literally just because we’ve been taught to be that since we were very, very young, and we haven’t stopped and actually looked at the idea and gone, Is that really useful? Is that really true?
Is it true that we don’t want to be ordinary, or is that really our deepest desire—to just relax and be part of everything, in ordinariness with everything?
The simplest thing to examine, and find out that it’s not true, is the idea of being exceptional—which we kind of see as the opposite of ordinary, right? That doesn’t exist. It is impossible to be exceptional in everything.
If we work really, really hard, we can be exceptional in a couple of different things. In fact, isn’t that kind of just the way nature is set up and human beings interact? We all have kind of our own little thing we’re good at. We also have things we’re not good at.
Being good at something or being not good at something does not in any way make you not be ordinary.
Ordinary is kind of like the base—the base being of everyone. In fact, the fear of being ordinary is also the fear of death.
Examine that for a moment. Because what is it that you’re actually afraid of with death? Everyone is afraid that that little specialness in them is going to go.
Maybe it’s your special thoughts. It’s your special experiences. We’re afraid that the thing we imagine is separate is going to disappear.
And yes, it will.
Yes, it will.
But this is why Sufism calls enlightenment die before you die—because this clinging to this idea of specialness, of extraordinariness—that’s the thing that can go away. And when that goes away, then only ordinariness is left. And that, in essence, is awakening.
You’re awakening to your true nature.
All these stories about enlightenment—you know, like the bliss, and the never make any mistakes, and the perfection, and the never have attachments—I mean, all these stories that have been told about enlightenment keep us from enlightenment because we take our minds and we turn these things into something exceptional.
We see enlightened people as exceptional.
But actually, they have stepped into total ordinariness.
And so, here’s the big joke:
Go and read all your favorite people. Read Krishnamurti. Read Buddha. Read Adyashanti. Read Rupert Spira. Read everyone. They are talking about ordinariness.
And then notice how your mind takes that and turns it into something extraordinary, or something special, or something that you aren’t this very moment.
And I’ll close with the thought:
If you became enlightened this exact second, how special are you?
You’re not that much.
Like, if this thing that you are right now—if that’s it—all specialness is immediately gone.
And you’ll find that, you know, rather than sitting and trying to become empty or just all these ideas of enlightenment—just relax into your ordinariness, and you will find an extreme relief.
And accept this as the totality of all that is.
And all of a sudden, you’re surrounded by right relationships—relation with everything.