January 2, 2008
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Circles… or spirals… or straight lines across curved space?
How does the world turn in your reality? What do you see? Is it one or another, or all of the above? There are about as many different ways to view something as there are people to do the viewing.
In the early portion of this lifetime, I was taught that seeing is believing, and I believed that. I also believed that God (the jealous, vengeful, patriarchal god of Moses) was real and ghosts were not; that Sigmund Freud had understood and explained the human psyche as well as anyone could; that crossing my fingers behind my back when I told a lie would make it okay, that wishes made on the evening star would come true, and that ideas such as astrology and reincarnation were nothing more than ignorant superstitions.
In other words, I was a gullible, ignorant and superstitious kid. I suppose that if this life were to extend as far into tomorrow as it does toward yesteryear, I would then find just as many examples of ways in which I am currently misguided, misled or misinformed. Fact is, I don’t know how much I don’t know. All I know is that I have learned a few things in my life so far.
Take, for example, that “seeing is believing,” bullshit. I see a lot of things I don’t believe, and certainly have the power, should I so choose, to believe things I have never seen. From David Copperfield to David Blaine, illusionists and prestidigitators entertain me, and sometimes baffle me regarding how they do what they do, but they don’t deceive me. My masters, mentors and gurus, by teaching me how the mind manifests that upon which it focuses, have taught me that believing is seeing, that our reality is conditioned by our beliefs.
Off and on, for about fifteen years, I have focused my mind on transcending the beliefs I was taught. It has always been a more or less sporadic, spare-time activity, except in times of stress, unhappiness or danger, when I could recognize that my peril, pain, or panic was unnecessary, and that I could relieve it by removing the beliefs behind it. I choose to believe that all suffering is optional, that the universe is basically benign, and that love and joy are attained by choice, not by chance.
Sometimes, now, I find myself thrust into the role of mentor, passing along the wisdom of my mentors to some suffering soul who chooses to believe that he or she is weak, powerless, fated to live out the life role in which society has cast her or doomed to descend to the end that God has ordained for him. I’m not on a mission to convert anyone to new beliefs. I just tend to respond when someone asks for help, and the best help I have ever had to offer is the information that suffering is optional and we can empower ourselves through the choice to own and exercise the power we possess, the powers of our attention and presence.
Frequently, however, people ask for help when what they really want is to be comforted and reassured, to have their beliefs validated. These troubled souls are seldom if ever comforted by the news that their misery is of their own making and their deliverance lies in their own power. I often cringe when it becomes apparent that I have innocently wandered into a mentoring relationship with someone whose subtext is something like, “I’m broken. Fix me.”
I can have fun challenging the false and limiting beliefs of some unhappy but arrogant know-it-all. I can do that with a clear conscience, confident that if any of my ideas stick and take root that person will undoubtedly benefit immediately, and though I may be sending him off on a trip through Chapel Perilous, he will have the mental momentum to carry him through.
Those others, the ones who profess weakness and look to me for salvation challenge me to find a way to facilitate their self-empowerment simultaneously with the transcendence of their false and limiting, but comforting and emotionally supportive, beliefs. I don’t want to be responsible for leaving someone in a fragile and vulnerable state hanging over the abyss through the long dark night of the soul, which is what can happen if these unorthodox ideas I’m presenting suddenly blow a big hole in one’s reality tunnel.
Maybe I am being overcautious, and a shock is what a person in such a state needs to impel her to transcendence. It is hard to know how much of a shock might be too much. Sometimes I feel I’d rather not be consulted, rather not be confronted with the need to explain my views and adapt the message to each new individual recipient. But most of the time, once I realize that this is where some conversation is headed or that this Work will be the basis of some new relationship, I welcome the challenge and work to meet it.
One of the persistent beliefs left over from my childhood is that each of us needs to pull her own weight, earn her oxygen and justify taking up space on the planet. At this time in my life, there are few other ways available to me to earn my keep, and there has never been anything else that I have been better at doing than this. My successful victims …er subjects have been eloquent in expressing how highly they value the power that comes with their new state of mind. Perhaps if I were a better salesman, I could gain wealth through this work… but how does one go about selling disillusionment?
Spare
change?
This is my begging hat. It is
a link to PayPal. If you haven’t seen it before and/or want
an explanation for why I’m begging, scroll down and catch up with the
whole story. If you would like to contribute, but prefer not
to use PayPal, my husband has posted his mailing address at ArmsMerchant.
Comments (5)
Kathy, I am laughing so hard right now… that I just finished linking to you in reference to my journey and then I see this is your latest entry. And how sometime about five years ago you helped blow a big hole in my restricted reality. I have to say that while it shocked my system… that’s exactly what I needed. Perhaps what I continue to need. Like electric shock, my psyche was rebooted and my belief system started fresh, way outside of my learned boundaries. My life/psyche has never been the same and I credit you (and Sarah) for being the fire under my ass that got me running forward.
It hardly suits to say thank you.
I hope that when given the opportunity, I can be someone else’s SuSu or Misfit with the same effect.
You do not need to earn your breath, you have earned it already. You just sit in that frozen place as comfy as you can until you decide enough…. then move on out of that body … but not a second before, please. And throw something for me at anyone who suggests otherwise.
Love you
.
Just passing by from Jennyg’s site. Hope you don’t mind, and hope things get better for you! Sounds like this past month (I’ve only read about 2 weeks back) has been rough. My thoughts are with you.
You’ve more than earned your place this go-round. Oh, my! My apologies for the pittance – I’ll be able to do more once I figure out the budget. You’ve helped me often, and mostly, without my acknowledgment.
Thank you. Many times over.
Please continue your healing, ‘eh?
transcend that which was taught…
in my elder dreams with my great grandfather, we were sitting across from each other with a pool of water between us..in the dream we were sifting through all the living things in the water and as we took each one and gleened it to its infinitely finite parts, the math and the algorithms that came forth were working like sine waves in color and sight as they glimmered and you could feel the counting and frequency of these things…my gran said in the dream that all these things would continue to be this way because they accepted the agreeance in their recreation to be so…we, however, can change all these things and even the agreeance to being human is a limitation we have only chosen to bear…on the reservation I have run as a wolf and for a moment with a wild heart beating, I forgot I was a human and I felt the earth world in my dreamtime…I have been so far removed for so long in the human world that I have lost my roots…so, I am planting new seeds, with a new dreamtime and now the ocean is my forest…
randomly….
p.s.: how is the recovery from the fire? from what I have read, you are well and moving…wholeness and life unto you
Whenever I think something’s just “all in my imagination” I always think of the following quote: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
healing thoughts sent your way.