This one has been nagging at me for a while….
Saturday is the Baby Shower for my truly delightful daughter-in-law and Mom-to-be. My Grandson is expected to make his arrival early July. I find myself wondering many things about him. As much as I know it is expected that he will learn from all of us, will we be wiling to learn about ourselves, from him? He has not yet arrived and I already know him to be whole, to be unique and to be essential to his world. I know he arrives with an intuitive genius, critical to the times he/we will be living in. Consciousness expressing through awakened presence takes many forms.
When I hold him and look into his eyes, will I remember that we become the stories we are told about ourselves? What stories will I tell him about his world, his potential and the power of his inner truth? As he grows, he will retell these stories to himself and others, each time pulled more deeply into his commitment to them. The deeper that groove, the more unwilling – and unable, without assistance – he will become to hearing a new story even when its whisper has become a road, screaming from somewhere deep in his Being, to be freed. Such is the power of cultural conditioning.
We are molded – and confined – by the degree to which we become unwilling to know of anything that does not align with our already-existing personal ’truth’.
We are – blindly and mindlessly – at the mercy of our deep commitment to have predictable and repetitive frameworks of thought from which to regurgitate our lives, from one day to the next. Over time, these do not exist in isolation of each other but become networks… webs… of entanglement that make anything other than themselves exhausting to even consider. Their sticky goo holds us wrapped in the entrainment of non-resistance, surrendering our curiosity and ultimately, our willingness to allow ourselves to turn toward the sun. We pull back from the edge, knowing that the agony of yet one more disappointment is too great to risk.
Imagine stepping out of your life and into the life of another. Not another like you but another whose life represents, perhaps, all that you abhor. I wonder how long it would take before you could see the intelligence in their choices, from inside the truth of their story.
Attachment. Long recognized as the tether that holds us in bondage to our own limitation, attachment is sown into the very fabric of our being at an early age. Attachment to another for physical survival. Attachment to another for emotional validation. Attachment to the world view of another’s reality as we seek… or not… to shape our own. So strong is this need for attachment that we are willing to surrender the truth of our own experience to the truth of some distant ‘other’… attached to the illusion that our own survival will be ensured through compliance and accommodation. We are fooling only ourselves.
I look at the world and I see a gargantuan mosaic of unique, multiple illusions. As horrific as some of them may be, I see the intelligence in it all. Like you, something from deep within me rises up when my attachments – to a world view, a moment in time, a person, a preferred outcome, etc. – feel compromised or threatened. I will defend my attachments… until I notice that they are just that: attachments. They are not the I AM that I am – they are the banners I wear so that you can recognize me and either move toward me or away from me. They are my ‘colours’, shared by the gang I call family/friends/associates/colleagues, etc. Such is the power that attachment carries in this illusion of a collective ‘reality’.
I no longer know what attachments are worth the effort of my attention, time or Life. Without my life-long commitment to have attachments, I sometimes wander and wonder: really? All that striving and struggling and effort and commitment and conviction? All that, for smoke?
There is this moment and no other. There is this moment… and this one… and this one….
Death can take many forms. Our ability to ‘become’ beyond who we already believe ourselves to be is fuelled by our curiosity. Without that, we think what we know is all there is for us to know or perhaps, all that it is safe for us to know. We trade in our innate curiosity – about ourselves, our realities and each other – for a life of attachments to what we think will keep us safe. We cease to grow, to engage, to move. When movement is a sign of Life, its absence is the early evidence of our decline.
I am mindful of the stories I choose to tell myself, about myself. Without an intimate awareness of those, I cannot be mindful of the ones I will tell my precious Grandson, about him. Whatever it is that will be meaningful in our lives, it will always begin with us.
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