This post is dedicated to my new friend, who I met just today, spontaneously, and who already has a place in my heart.
The
journey to know yourself is the first step towards understanding
how the world works and becoming truly yourself, which is necessary, I
think, if you hope to ever make the world a little better.
As de Mello said, this
journey is mostly about getting rid of the everybody-else stuff that
has become attached to us as part of our social conditioning, and
getting rid of this stuff is perhaps what ee cummings meant when he
said the hardest thing is to be nobody-but-yourself when the world is
relentlessly trying to make you everybody-else. From birth, we pick up
all this everybody-else stuff that clings to us and changes us, muddies
us. We are rewarded by society for doing so.
I find the 'figments of
reality' thesis helpful in this hard work -- realizing that our minds
are nothing more than problem-detection systems evolved by the organs
of our bodies for their purposes, not 'ours'. That 'we' are, each 'one'
of us, a collective, a complicity.
So our body is working away telling us exactly what to do to, and be,
in the self-interest of our organs. And our culture is telling us to be
everybody-else, to look like, be and do exactly as others do.
So when we fall in love, our body tells us to go for it, to love
unreservedly, to make fools of ourselves if necessary, while our
culture tells us to play it cool, to keep our heart out of sight. When
are consumed with lust for someone or something, our body says pounce,
take it, get it, now, don't wait, while our culture says to show
appreciation and attention but not to go too fast or appear too
desperate -- to play games. When we face unbearable stress, from
provocation, violation, loss, illness or violence against us or someone
or something we love, our body says fight or flee (and tells us which)
while our culture tells us to control our temper. And now we live in
the terrible modern world of scarcity of love and of resources, and
horrific overcrowding unheard of in natural populations, so these
provocations and stresses are chronic, frequent and intense.
Caught between the two, no wonder we make ourselves ill. If we lived
naturally (which is,sad to say, no longer an option), we would face no
such tensions. We could then be like all other wild cultures,
uninhibited, spontaneous, direct, and resolve our passions and tensions
quickly. No pretense, no artifice, no holding back. Raw.
Our culture however frowns on such behaviour as
anti-social, weird, self-preoccupied, or arrogant. So we end up, I
think, having to adopt a public persona that is, to some extent, not
genuine, not 'us' at all. That's hard. We have to pretend to feel what
we do not, and pretend not to feel what we do. We have to pretend to be
what we are not, and pretend not to be who we really are. So after
awhile we begin to believe we are this other, this false and civilized
persona, and cease to believe or understand who we really are. And
finally we become this other, or as close to it as we can pull off. We
become everybody-else.
It takes enormous strength, self-confidence and/or indifference to what
others think of 'us', to resist this self-censorship, this willing
inauthenticity. So when we do fall in love, or otherwise feel the
intense emotion that makes us 'us', we are so masked and so unpracticed
at genuine expression of feeling that, so often, it then comes out all
wrong, repressed. We are rendered mute, incoherent.
Our model for how we should relearn to behave authentically is that of
wild creatures and young children. We should relearn to be wild. To
wear our hearts on our sleeves. Our responsibility as 'civilized'
adults should not be to repress our feelings, but rather to express
ourselves completely candidly, joyfully, genuinely, with only one
constraint: we must do so in a way that does not hurt others.
This takes some time and permission to practice, some knowledge and
awareness of others' feelings, and most of all a deep knowledge of
ourselves. Because most of us lack these things, we simply hide behind
our persona -- it's easy, and it's socially accepted. But it's
dishonest. It puts a veil between ourselves and others. And worst of
all it makes us everybody-else.
I am beginning to learn that I can be nobody-but-myself even in the
company of others who have become so much everybody-else that they will
find me troubling. My Purpose in life is to provoke, to allow to
emerge, Let-Self-Change in others. To do that I have to be a model of
Let-Self-Change myself: open, honest, strong, yet sensitive. A year ago
I would have said this would be impossible.
Now I am finding it easy, fun, natural. What's more, it seems to be
appreciated. Rather than being resented for being a little too raw,
people seem to find me refreshing, curious, interesting, even
infectious. As I become more and more nobody-but-myself, everybody-else
I meet seems a little less determined to continue to be everybody-else.
Perhaps we can never just be ourselves, not in this world, not now. But
if that's true I'm convinced it's because we have forgotten how, rather
than because we would not be tolerated, accepted, loved.
3:21:34 AM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
