What am I? Who am I? Where am I going? What is the purpose of it all?
What could possibly be more important than learning the answers to these questions? I know mostly only one thing: that I exist. So let’s begin with that. Follow along with me if you will: picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Well, maybe not that. This: it is a warm comfortable summer day. You string a hammock in a glen of large beautiful shade trees. Swaying gently, you hear the sound of moving water from a small creek just steps away. Birds twitter. Clouds drift in a blue sky. A breeze touches the leaves above. You are aware but no thoughts intrude. Just stay there for a while. This peace and quiet is the natural state of this world. Some call it love.
You fell asleep! Wake up! As a child, when did you first become aware of your “self”? I remember. I must have been around 3 years old though I’m not sure. It is a beautiful day. Suddenly…and in fact surprisingly, I realize I have pooped my pants. I worry about the ramifications of that. I climb up a few steps to a small porch overlooking a yard. I see green grass, a fence, another house, large trees, and a deserted street. It is warm and quiet. That’s all I remember. This was the beginning and this was where the trouble began.
I had no memory of “who” I was before that day and had no sense of “self”- no preconceptions. The world looked new somehow. From that point on I began a process of defining myself. By that I mean that I began separating myself from the world “out there” - searching for an identity, and eventually… meaning. I met and became friends with the kids in the neighborhood. I played in the dirt. I observed the insects, the animals, the plants…day, night, and the changing of the seasons. Slowly but surely the separation grew. I built memories, wished on the future, experienced happiness and sadness. I desired things…and people. I judged. I learned what others around me called right, wrong, truth…and developed assumptions. You may call this “self awareness”. But it is not.
These things we learn, these experiences, these memories, our obsessive aspirations…they whirl around and around in our minds. We spin a fairy castle of these thoughts and these castles need maintenance- lots and lots of it. We worry, we speculate, we scheme, we strive, we hate, and yes- love. We think and think and think until being in this moment is a rarity. How ludicrous. The past is just a memory and the future- a dream. We have created an image of ourselves and called it “me”. Is that all we are? Those memories? Those dreams? Those imaginings projected on the screen of our minds? Who is running the projector?
Your first sense of being …do you remember it? That “feeling” of existence…that awareness…before the trouble began? Has this sense changed at all really over all these years? Maybe the real you exists behind the “person” you’ve created: that loving quiet awareness…never beginning, never ending. Do you remember your birth? Do you think you’ll remember your death? This could all be so simple. And perhaps we come out of this world, not into it. We manifest and grow…ever changing: sprout, sapling, flower, fruit. The fruit ripening, dropping to the ground, pulp dissolving into the earth, seeds becoming new trees… in the glen where you string your hammock.
© Steve Stewart and See Next Rock,
2013
The answer is 42.
ReplyDeleteThat is a big number. I thought it was 8.
ReplyDelete