Reality And Its Fundamental Goodness

This is something I have wanted to say something about, because it’s such a paradoxical statement. Which is interesting. I think it gets at some fun subtly confusing things. Let’s go and see.

So, when I imagine saying “Reality and it’s fundamental goodness” to someone, most people, I imagine that a misunderstanding will ensue. Some people will frown skeptically. Do I really mean that everything about reality is somehow good? Or, at least, that the sum of all comes out well net positive? What about all the bad things, the death, the suffering? Maybe this is a discussion about glass half full vs half empty? Some people will smile, and nod. Yes, the glass is half full. Reality is a good place, not a bad place. Glad we’re on the same page. It seems so much better to believe that life is fundamentally good. But, no, that’s not at all what I’m trying to say. (One might think I should use better words if I’m expecting to be misunderstood by basically everyone. But somehow… I don’t.) 

I’m not trying to say anything about expectations of “good experiences” vs “bad experiences”. Or wait, maybe I am. I’m trying to say something about the experience of realness itself. There is fundamental goodness to the experience of realness. One element I’ve talked about elsewhere is that the experience of truth is fundamentally good and that the truth of experience is fundamentally goodness.

But that’s also not quite what I’m trying to say. This is something more about inclusion in reality having a flavor of miraculous goodness. And it’s a different flavor from the goodness of truth. For one, it’s subtler, and harder to point to. It’s one of those delightful subtlenesses hidden behind the conceptual clutter. It’s surprising. Somehow the hereness of things, itself, is subtly, miraculously, full of grace. Existence, itself, is subtly an act of grace. Not even our existence, as in, isn’t it great to be alive, to have lived. The existence of things, of particles or whatever. There’s a graciousness to the existence and movement of particles.

This sounds super odd, because are we really actually experiencing the existence and movement of particles? Probably not? But something about the existence property itself, the thingness of things, feels like that. By thingness I don’t mean objects, per se, I mean the property that thingness of things can arise from conceptualization of experience. There’s something inherently good, delightful and gracious about the thingness of things, of what’s behind the forms that isn’t yet the emptiness of experience.

A subtle sense of grace, lighter than air, softer than love, subtler than space, infinitesimally perfect.