The Infinite Rope Dilemma™
TIRD™, for short.
Okay, the dilemma goes like this:
Imagine an infinite rope. All there is is infinite rope.
Now imagine you’re tasked to find the knot in this infinite rope. I call this The Infinite Rope Dilemma™ — TIRD™, for short.
How would you go about it? Which way would you search? Left? Right? Flip a coin?
Sounds dumb if you put it like this.
Everyone tries to solve this dilemma, whether they know it or not.
Many (most?) people don’t understand the problem. They just rush ahead, left or right, searching for the knot.
In worldly terms, it looks like the attempt to reach lasting fulfillment through things. In other words, you’re trying to defeat the existential dread, in whichever form it shows itself, through improvement and, hopefully, achievement. This amounts to trying to add knots to untie the Knot.
Some people, so-called seekers, are more aware of this dilemma — they try to solve it actively by laboring to understand the problem more deeply. They grasp that improvement as a kind of ultimate solution is an exercise in futility. They rightly assume that when the problem is fully understood, it dissolves, like a question disappears once answered.
So you might come face-to-face with the Knot. Now all you have left to do is to untie it. It’s a simple single knot, not even properly tightened. Untie the Knot. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Go on… what are you waiting for?
How do you untie a knot on an infinite rope?
Not, that’s how.
The problem is that understanding gets conflated with intellectualism. You can arrange and rearrange the concepts as much as you like, but getting a PhD in TIRD Studies and arguing the finer subtleties of the Knot Hypothesis also fails as a solution.
The dilemma seems unsolvable. That’s only because we have started off on the wrong foot.
The Infinite Rope is all there is — no borders, no ends, no parts, no separation. So, who are you again?
Poke at this sufficiently and something becomes apparent:
You couldn’t find the Knot because you were the Knot, looking for itself. Of course, you were never really the Knot. You are the Rope.
So stop for a moment and ask without narrative:
Where does the Rope end and "you" begin?
What, in direct experience, is not made of Rope?
And if a thought pops up claiming to be a knot, look closer. Can it really be anything but Rope?
Besides, where would a knot be on an infinite rope?
NowHere, that’s where.
No matter how many knots there appear to be, there can only ever be Rope.
Brilliant