Spiritual Bubbles
The gray bubble said to the blue bubble, "Reality is gray." The blue bubble said, "No, it's NOT gray. It’s blue." Then they both fought. But eventually, through the conflict, they both popped and got inside a yellow bubble called "enlightenment." They began touring the world together, trying to pop all other bubbles.
But who would pop their yellow bubble?
Along came a purple bubble that said, "All bubbles are allowed." The purple bubble had no desire to pop anyone's bubble. But then the purple bubble ran across the yellow bubble and didn’t like it, so it excluded it. The excluded yellow bubble colored itself pink and started touring the world again, as the new enlightenment bubble. It touted itself as the bubble that has come to understand how all other bubbles work in relation to each other, putting exclusionary bubbles at the bottom of the hierarchy. It had all bubbles and the story of bubbling mapped out perfectly.
Then came a brown bubble and said, "All you other bubbles have over complicated this whole thing." This is just about seeing that there is no bubble.
Brown became popular. It was like fast food, McDonaldized enlightenment. All other bubbles loved it. Brown claimed that yellow and pink and all the other bubbles still saw themselves as bubbles. And that was their problem. If they could only see that they were never bubbles to begin with, they would see that they are already free.
But who would pop Brown’s bubble?
Then one day Brown's version fell out of popularity. Brown was never popped. He still has a book and a website, but no other bubbles come to visit it. All the other bubbles didn't get his fast food enlightenment. So they found other bubbles.
All the bubbles floated around, wondering which arrangement of bubbles is the right one, which color is the true enlightenment.
Several bubbles started to notice something peculiar. They noticed that all bubbles, no matter what color, arose and fell within a bubble-less silence or space. They began to just rest and know their real nature as this bubble-less silence to which all bubbles come and go.
This provided a deep and profound peace. All other bubbles started to get on board, each experiencing the peace.
But then it went to their bubble heads. And they made a religion out of it, demanding that it was the truth, above and beyond all other truths. Conflict broke out….all in the name of peaceful silence.
They thought they had entered the bubble-less truth. But they really just went into another bubble. It was a clear bubble. It looked like it had no form, but it was in fact a form. A bubble. They thought they had transcended all bubbles. After all, they were experiencing real freedom and peace. But in the end, they had just jumped into a new bubble.
And this silent, clear bubble was the biggest bubble of all, because it claimed to be beyond all bubbles.
Then came along a silver bubble that just liked being in whatever bubble was appearing at the moment, silence, peace, frustration, anger, enlightened, unenlightened. All the other bubbles loved it! They joined along. The clear bubble came back out to play. Red, blue, brown, all of them floated out. Everyone floated and danced around in the air, feeling free, loving whatever bubble was appearing in that moment.
But then silver bubble turned his freedom into a religion. He started to believe that his bubble contained truth. He became arrogant and self-righteous. All the other bubbles floated away . . . . they were so let down. The only bubbles that stayed with silver were the ones who parroted his self-righteous talk. They all now live on an island off the coast of Florida. And the island is surrounded by a silver bubble. Nobody and nothing gets in and nobody and nothing gets out.
After all this happened, a shiny red bubble appeared. The red bubble just wanted to talk about love. She said, “If we can all just trust love, then we will find the answer that we are looking for.” All the other bubbles rejoiced! They joined together into one big bubble called “The Red Love Bubble.” They proudly called themselves “The heart openers.” They went around trying to get all the other bubbles to open their hearts. Some of the other bubbles wouldn’t do it. They wanted to stay in their heads.
The Red Love Bubble became a big organization. It took a firm public stance that “any bubble whose heart is not open is destroying our precious world of bubbles.” The non-heart-opened bubbles were ostracized by the heart-opened bubbles. They were not allowed into the Red Love Bubble. The world became divided between the Reds and all other bubbles. And conflict broke out, all in the name of love…. The Red Bubble disbanded, after having lost its members. No more donations.
Distraught . . . all the bubbles sat around, still looking for the true bubble.
They thought, “Maybe a new colored bubble will come along and pop all these bubbles and create the grand daddy of all bubbles—like a gold plated bubble. The one and only true enlightened bubble!”
But then one of the bubbles said, “Wouldn’t that just be another bubble that would need to be popped in the end?”
“Or would it need to be popped at all?” asked another bubble.
None of them had the answers….
One of the bubbles said, “How would we know the answer unless we consulted one of the bubbles…because the rules of the game are decided within each bubble, aren’t they?”
This confused all the bubbles, even the ones who thought they were still enlightened. They had to check within their bubble to see if they were still enlightened. And of course the answer is always yes from within the bubble.
They were all looking for the objective bubble . . . the bubble that would finally decide these ultimate questions of Truth, Love, and Freedom.
And so here came the white bubble, THE objective bubble. And they looked inside...
and it was empty….
So then they all went out to eat, laughed and had fun, seeing that there was no objective bubble. They had all been looking for something that was empty.
But as they were eating, a baby blue bubble started experiencing some existential anxiety. Baby blue’s mother could not pacify baby blue. Baby blue was clearly upset. After all, no one had discovered which bubble was the right and true one. “Which one is it?” she asked. None of the other bubbles could answer. They just looked puzzled. The baby blue bubble became upset, throwing a fit, and yelling, “Which one is it? Which one is it?”
But none of the other bubbles could answer it.
The question just floated around.
Can real freedom ever be conditioned on whether this question is answered or not? The most you would have, either way, is another bubble. POP!