I woke up with a start at 3:30 am. And now, as I approach 5:00 am and am still awake, the message is clear to me: get up!
Stop thinking about engaging and just engage. And so, here I am.
I’ve read and re-read your responses many, many times. With each pass, I am attuned to my own experience of myself through the read. I recognize certain things about myself.
A very, very old wave activates as I notice an inner voice speaking to me, in the timbre and cadence of a much younger me: I have gone too far. I have asked too many questions. I have pressed and insisted when I should have looked the other way. I can see the faces of so many around me – my parents, my teachers, the other kids in the class – indicative of their irritation and annoyance. What I could not know then is that underneath that which was directed at me lay their own discomfort.
Even then, as a child as young as 4, I knew that the movement from status-quo to irritation meant that we were approaching something that could not only rock the boat, but could also sink it. In this moment, I feel that.
The first thought when I awakened at 3:30 was the movie ’The Matrix’. The red pill or the blue pill. You take the blue pill, and you wake up easing back into your day. Take the red pill….. and the plug on the illusion is pulled – and a different journey begins. Through that movie, I vacillated from red to blue; often wondering if ’truth’ was the prize it was made out to be. As I watched one of the characters eat his steak and marvel at knowing it was nothing more than an accumulation of bits and bytes of information, it sure tasted great!
My life has been one of choosing to take the red pill. I have always preferred to know ’the truth’, than not. Over time, as I’ve become wiser in my longer-lived days, I am also mindful of the degree to which ’the truth’ can wear many cloaks. What is true to one is deception to another. What is true today may not be so tomorrow. Truth, through the eye of the beholder, morphs. Truth can be ’spun’ and shaped to the essential of any given moment. Truth has proven to be a platform for expediency rather than any absolute that stands alone. Today, ‘alternative facts’ pave the way for alternative truths to be invented.
And now, at this place in my life, I know truth as only one thing: that which moves inside me. As such, it does not always map to anything outside of me. I do not hold my ’truth’ as the right one – just the right one for me. The one I trust. And then, as I evolve, I own the right to change my mind.
Every aspect of my own consciousness that each of you is, carries truth for me to reconsider. Long ago, I had a truth that whispered that if I were willing to do and be X, the world could be a better place for my children. My children are now hunters and own many guns; they are interconnected with others who hunt and own many guns; and they are prepared – physically, emotionally and spiritually – for what they believe they may well have to live through. My heart breaks. There is nothing more to say.
In this moment, I find myself wondering: what is the truth that continues to provoke my own awakening (at 3:30 and in any other ways)? What is it that just won’t leave me alone? It is certainly NOT that I have some responsibility to anything outside myself; or that I am obliged in some way to engage. It is not that it carries any cause/effect outcome (i.e. if I do x then y will follow). It is simply this: I am not able to do/be otherwise. For me, that must be its own acceptable outcome.
I notice (as I mentioned before: witness the size of this group) that I am drawn to engage with fewer and fewer. Again, not good/bad, right/wrong…just the way it is. I trust my inner truth – and it always takes the lead. The conversations that live inside me are not to be had with any and all. I respect that. I’m ok with that. And I prefer silence to talking about the weather.
Do I have hope that our world will recover from the path we’re on? No, I don’t. And then I wonder: does it matter? Does my hoping fuel any particular outcome? I don’t think so. It’s that cause/effect thing, again.
What does matter is that I not abandon mySelf… whatever state I might be in, in the moment. What matters is that I claim and own what lives in me and engage it. It will take the lead and from that, the moment will unfold.
I do know one other thing: I am tired. In my mind, I see an ocean. Likely, the Pacific – the Great Mother whose waters have shaped me. I know that at some time, I was a massive wave…. undulating from Her deepest parts…. making its way to the shore. At the deepest part of the ocean, the undulation… the wave… is massive and powerful and strong. As time and distance are travelled, that undulation changes shape and force….until it rides up the sand in its finest, lightest form… and touches the world around it. Perhaps we are not intended to seek to hold to that deep undulation. Perhaps we are intended to break upon the shore, letting go of what we once were, and allow ourselves to be transformed.
I am no longer the force of that deep undulation. I now know myself more as a lightly falling rain. You will still get wet – but you will not drown. You can avoid it and not be swamped by it. When you move out of its way, it will not pursue you. And nonetheless, I know that even this lightly falling rain will not be compromised.
The other thing I know: I don’t know. I have not a clue. In my avoidance of getting up (sheesh!) at 4:00 am., I read Deb O’s latest blog on her site. She has posted the last part of her extensive essay. Ah yes… I remember well that passion. And in this moment: I really don’t care. Not because I do not ‘love’ – but because I no longer believe that ‘loving’ makes a difference. To me, in the truth of my experience, the only thing that makes a difference is being awake! And for THAT, there is no easy path. In my many years of this life, few have welcomed the red pill.
Today, in this writing process, is hump day! Day 5 completed will take us over the hump. I appreciate what it takes to be part of this and I am aware that there is no happy ending in sight.
I often think of you, Naomi, and your children as you book one-way flights to Hawaii. There, your lives will unfold in freedom of Being. Freedom to choose. Freedom to separate from history, habit and the status-quo. You will still have to do laundry. You will still face challenges and uncertainties. There will still be laughter and tears. It is not that your lives will be soothed by Hawaii – it is that they will be sourced by the living of that inner truth, as it unfolds from one moment to the next, far from the ties that could so easily bind. The conversations will be of your choosing. And the pulse will be strong.
The sun rose with a glorious pink/gold/silver/grey sky. I like my little perch on the world. I get both the rising and the setting sun. There is something important in that. Perhaps it is that I am so aware that it is not a single thing but a cycle. The recognition that the sun is not doing anything other than what it always does. It is my world that is turning.
In this moment, I am done. I may return later today… I don’t know. I am done – and I am not yet sure that for me, Day 5 is complete.
Thank you, all, for staying with this. Thank you for your inner truths, embraced. For your stamina and courage. I stand in the swirl of the extremes, not knowing anything other than the simple truth that Day 6 will present. It always does.
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