The Pacifier

When I was a toddler none would dare to take off my pacifier or all hell would break loose, but then I grew up and forget all about it, I had my toy cars now, but it wouldn't take long to abandon those things too for my first bicycle or later on as a teen and so on, my cell, my smart, my pc, my motorbike, my car, and didn't give a toss anymore of all things gone as the interests shifted, but what remained the same was the strong attachment to each, to whatever each.

Never longed for my pacifier ever since no matter how important was to me at the time.

I didn't choose any of those things either, they were bestowed to me through generational cultural conditioning, my species social memory, my dna, my natal chart, my karma, and if I was a girl I would care for my dolls and then my first earnings, or for that cute guy at school, etc.

Further more, I didn't choose my country, I just spawned here, or my family of which I absorbed all my basic yet strong conditioning that almost never can be left behind ever since, or my school, the teaching which greatly impacts my development, my religion, the environment in general that influences my personality beyond the birthmarks, or more importantly the experiences that shaped me in to what I am.

Being a left handed for example where more of the right brain is used, which greatly affects the way I respond to external stimuli or react to events. Or my food preferences, sexual desires, the music, the movies I like. I never chose any of those things.

Yet something in me is defending them as the be all and end all, as if its own very existence depends on them, ready to give a fight to death if any of those things gets threatened, even slightly, no matter how a great part of them are so malleable and changeable that just wither and die over time only to get replaced by new preferences as I grow up or change perspective.

It only needs to attach on something, whatever that something might be, it doesn't actually matters and it could be quite the opposite from what it used to be. Barcelona now, Juventus tomorrow (unlikely), Peoria-Illinois now, Paris-Texas then, and how furious it can be when it comes to my country, no matter what a s'hole it can actually be, it's my country, it's always god's own country.

Something in me derives its sense of Self out of those temporary idiosyncrasies, without even being loyal to many of them in the long run, and without ever asking why am I defending something I never chose in the first place.

And maybe my football team or my religion will probably, and that's a big question mark there, remain the same during my entire lifetime, not many my other likes-dislikes will, especially if one is on a spiritual path on which sooner or later a total transformation takes place.

So maybe, and if I was spiritually inclined girl, I would at some point dump those romantic books or those perfect hair/nails/eyelashes/makeup relationship advice gurus tube channels for something more substantial like meditation or yoga, and yet without me even noticing, what I would, with such great zest, defend yesterday, it's now burned to ashes and couldn't care less. Like my pacifier.

Which comes to the most fleeting of all, the most interchangeable, the most feeble. My ideas.

Or whatever I (seemingly) choose to influence me for the time be, the resonance of this period, which never of course feels as temporary like that, but it makes a great impact on me as if it's the one ultimate culmination of everything ever existed.

But i read that book and it was like a million light bulbs went on in me all of the sudden like an xmas tree. It's crazy.

And if I am coming from a westernized, type of "what you see if what you get" mentality, I might find myself at some point drawn to a sort of "just the facts" type of narrative about what awakening is, a striped down to the actual point, version of a much more elaborated sum total of knowledge, of which I have no time or interest to follow, I don't resonate with, it's all hocus pocus anyway, and as soon as I am attached to this particular narrative, although I read about attachment every other paragraph in it, I am ready to defend it with my extended armory of debating skills. I am hooked.

Thus the message of freedom quickly becomes yet another subscribed Egoic idea, pend up in a square box smaller than my engaging ring one, not unlike any other secular belief I have and instead of liberating, turns in to a new mental prison of which breaking free of takes a lot of real Life gang banging me until that hard shell of piecemeal understanding opens up to an infinite, ever expanding universe, where even physics constants are in flux, and anything is possible. Anything. Only limited by the imagination of my current state of consciousness.

Now, of course, that's only the one side of the coin. The Bhakti is on the other.

Using the term very loosely here and again if I am coming from a more or less devotional temperament and found myself between angels and demons, devouring anything that begins with, but not necessarily limited to, occult, theosophy, new age, gnostic, religion, spirituality, and maybe coupled with a grain of conspiracy, the archons, the reptilian overlords, "the truth is out there" attitude, meditating, channeling aliens, cleaning energies, healing past life karma, eating healthy, and donating to PETA, I am already subscribed to a dual perspective of something higher than me that I need to attend to diligently and maybe after a certain large amount of time, or even the afterlife, I may be worthy to achieve liberation. That is If I am not waiting for a second coming or some sort of an ascension event to happen first.

And that includes, when I thought I broke free from my so restrictive religion, for a more open perspective, a new age dogma of a nondual God that dwells in me, that completely changed my life after the, same as the other one, xmas tree lit up in me, in a glorious "I'm born again" flash of consciousness shift. And yet sooner or later I found myself obeying the same principles of higher and lower and the struggle to become but never Be [Is].

Slowly, silently, in the background, in the shadows of my complacency and without me noticing, the Ego appropriated and twisted the message again to suit its own agenda.

Now of course between the two extremes of either direct understanding and knowledge vs growth and devotion there's an endless gamma of preferences that are down to the level of the individual. No one path is the same. Everything is tailored for our vastly different backgrounds.

What remains the same is the fortitude with which I defend my perspective each time, as if my life depends on it. And it kind of does, or so it seems at that point.

But how couldn't I. I mean those people believe on Melchizedek or something, all nutjobs, I can't allow this in my forum, they ruin everything, this is neo-advaita, please be gone.

Or on the eother hand, my SO is on to such and such teacher these days, he comes off like it's all appearances, nothing matters, everything is impermanent, it's all an illusion, he stopped meditating, he gained 30 pounds eating pizza, I am at loss, please help.

It took me quite awhile to realize that I was carving a piece of art, made of time and experience, as I was passing through phases of inner transformation using ideas as scalpels to shape the marble of my psyche, with each one of them absolutely necessary for the needs of each period I was in each time. Tailored and precise. Later on I saw I could change tools on the go, go back to the tool of advaita for example,

a surgical knife of sorts, or maybe sandpaper out some rough edges with some other stuff in my disposal, then move a bit to the left to some other tool, then grab it again and so on, yet being flexible about it and not subscribing anymore to any of it. I knew at last that attachment didn't help me anymore. I could now use any idea without the idea using me.

It didn't came in one go, and I am still carving, and sometimes I imagine a sandy beach, a moonless night, the faint glow of the galaxy above me, and long for the colors I can't yet see.

Submitted September 26, 2018 at 07:02AM by Camiell https://ift.tt/2N5bQ8u