August 29, 2024
If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe…This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave. ~ Eckhart Tolle
When thinking about that statement of Eckhart Tolle’s, I’ve been using the phrase “nobody special.” Copying the quotation here, I realize that’s not what he said. He said “nobody in particular.”
There’s quite a semantic difference between nobody in particular and nobody special. It’s verbally nitpicking, to be sure, but “nobody in particular” doesn’t seem to connote a sense of judgment, while “nobody special” sounds more than a little derogatory. If you’re not special, you must be less-than someone who is special.
How interesting that my mind assigned a value judgment to this concept by misremembering the quote. Because, of course I want to align myself with the power of the universe. And yet I don’t want to lose my sense of individuality, my perceived specialness, which seemed to be where Eckhart was pointing.
*****
To not stand out, to be nobody in particular, fills me with a sense of relief. I can drop an unrecognized burden, the onus to “be someone.” In my instance, to be an author, to be published. I can let go of the mostly subliminal yearning to be recognized and even lauded, which might slyly encourage me to elevate myself as somehow “better,” and by comparison assign others a less-than status.
As I walked the creek path by the secret garden this morning, I paused, and for a brief moment perceived the dusty gray-green bushes, the towering trees, the flattened golden grasses on the small hillside, even the tract houses peeking over the wall, just as they were. Nothing in particular, just something being as it was, where it was. And I was just another thing being as I was, where I was.
A sense of connection, of sameness yet differentness, flitted through my awareness and vanished, but not before I realized that the secret of unimaginable peace lay in that moment of knowing.
*****
I suppose there’s irony in writing about an experience of not being special, while intending to publish it and thereby stand out.
Since life is chockablock with irony, I’m comfortable with that. I’m not sure the experience is repeatable, but the next time I walk the pathway between the creek and the secret garden, I will linger at that particular spot and look about me, and remember the sense of being nobody special in a universe of completely individual and special things, none of which are anything in particular, each of which is valuable and essential beyond imagining.
