A ball of junk

Filed under Notes on 19. July 2007 »

There is a Japanese video game I remember from a while back, called We Love Katamari, where the objective is, if I recall correctly, to roll an adhesive ball through a stage attempting to pick up everything that will stick to it. So at the end of a level you will want to have accumulated as many objects as possible onto the ball; basically, the bigger the ball of stuff the better.

Sounds familiar? It should, because this closely resembles the game of life. Not real life, of course, but the illusory game of gain and loss that one plays as the personal self. A game where accumulating more and more forms is the only objective, almost regardless of what those forms actually are. More is better.

The personal self, then, is like a ball of junk. It identifies with form, and the built-in survival mechanism cares about nothing other than accumulating more and more things. If I am the sum of the things in my ball of junk, then maintaining and preferably growing that ball is crucial to my survival. In this game, the ultimate objective is to accumulate enough things onto the ball of junk so that you can finally retire from the game. Arriving or making it in the game is to have gained a ball of junk large and substantial enough to sustain you for the rest of your life.

Now, let’s imagine that the core of this ball is illuminated. The light shining from the core is life, or God, or your true Self, whatever you want to call it. It is the essence of life itself, and it is you. When a human being is born, there is little or no junk stuck to the ball and so the light shines through very easily. Look into the eyes of a 1yr old baby and you see radiant light, but fast forward 40 years when that baby is a fast track corporate executive with a stock portfolio and twelve meetings before noon — the light may be there, but most likely it has dimmed considerably over years and years of covering it up with junk. There may be glimpses here and there, a glint or two during a game of golf or whatever, but not much.

The spiritual path is the shedding of this accumulation of junk. And it’s simple; letting go of things is technically easier than picking them up. But it is as difficult as it is simple, because our conditioning teaches us that gaining is good and losing is bad. And that our survival depends on having a sufficient inventory of objects. If you have an object in your hand, dropping it is technically easier than picking up another one, but the difficulty lies in having been told that “whatever you do, don’t drop that object. If you run out of objects, you die.” And so even if simply letting go of the object is the key to liberation, we decide to hold onto it just in case, and then maybe pick up another one just to be safe.

These objects are not necessarily material objects, like luxury items or property of some kind; ultimately it always comes down to the thought form associated with the material object, and so accumulating junk is not limited to what you see on the surface. Your ball of junk may not have sports cars and jewelry, but instead of those things you may have accumulated thought forms and images of how sophisticated and advanced you are for not having sports cars and jewelry. Instead of identifying with the car, you identify with being someone who has gone beyond needing to identify with cars. Which of course implies that you are a greater person because of it.

Seeing this distinction between a material object and the thought form associated with it is fundamental in learning how to let go of the junk. It is not an exercise in selling all your material belongings and renouncing your name — the surface manifestation is secondary, but the important thing is to let go of attachment and identification with the thought forms. The ball of junk is not populated with material things, but with thoughts about material things. And so in this shedding of junk, what you are actually letting go of are conditioned thoughts and beliefs.

Letting go of the junk is simple, and the only thing keeping you from it is the conditioned habit of giving more value to the junk than that which it obscures, namely life itself.