"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against
knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently
separate, independent, and isolated
ego."
I am indebted to
Alan Watts
who inspired this conversation.
Foreword:
The matter of who we really are (or if you prefer, of
what we really are) is for the most part not included in
our polite exchanges and day to day conversation. Neither for that
matter is it
front-and-center
in our
institutions of
education
and / or our
technical
schooling.
Even stranger, it's not included in our
religious
discourses much either.
Indeed, the very fact of the matter that who we really are isn't
included, isn't included either.
It's a convenient omission, and it's also
an inconvenient
omission.
Here's the convenient omission.
I hazard a guess (and I hazard a second guess that my first guess is
accurate) that some of us already are that when this
conversation we're about to have is complete, it will have been too
abstract, too heady, too intellectual. I submit to you it's
really not. It's actually a
dogshit
reality
which we cast as abstract, heady, intellectual in order to
resist
it. And it's OK ie alright if you do. But I
invite
you to stay the course and remain open to its abstracts after it's
complete.
Most of us at some point or other in our lives have asked ourselves ie
mused something like "Is it just me?" ie "Am I the only
one?". My own most clear-cut recollection of first asking these
questions was when I
began
noticing that who we really are, isn't something we have a
comfortable handle on. More than that, we don't have a comfortable
handle on who we really are, and yet we do things. We live our
lives, we drive cars, we cook, we go to the store. Yet we don't have a
handle on who we really are as we drive cars, as we cook, as we go to
the store. Man! I find that strange (is it just me? am I the only
one?).
This is what's always occurred to me as strange, as an anomaly: how can
we, not having a handle on / not knowing who we really are, do
anything at all? And when I say "... not knowing who we
really are ..." I don't mean not knowing our name, our height, our net
worth, our mailing address etc. I mean not knowing who we
really are. We live our lives. We truly work hard at
living our lives. And yet we don't know who or what we really are
that's living our lives. It's unfathomable. This is what I
began
noticing: we're OK with omitting who's really living our lives, we're
OK with omitting what's really living our lives. It was a
big
awakening for me, one which begged so many questions. It's when I first
mused "That's mighty convenient" (is it just me? am I the
only one?).
Actually, omitting who we really are, isn't merely convenient. It's
waaay beyond merely convenient. It's chiseled into the
rock by an ancient taboo, a taboo that justifies keeping who we really
are out of reach. It wasn't set in place by a legal process, a vote, or
a discussion of any kind. It's dictated automatically by
our survival instinct ie by our drive to survive. The omission is
automatic, so who we really are is omitted for us ie
without effort and conveniently. That's what there is to
confront: this omission is really convenient. And what's "convenient"
about it is it allows us to avoid being responsible for who we
really are.
Stepping up
to being responsible for who we really are, isn't required in order to
survive. Really. You and I will survive for as long as we do, whether
or not we
step up
to being responsible for being who we really are. Omitting being
responsible for who we really are, is convenient inasmuch as it
lets us off to
commit
to nothing, yet surviving and allowing the status quo to persist (the
"status quo" is living our lives without being responsible for who we
really are).
This convenience allows us to live in a strange kind of socially
accepted daze in which we're alive yet incognizant of who we really
are. I'm
sorry
but I assert that is strange. It's strange that we can be
alive, live our lives, and yet not know who it is that's alive and / or
not know what it is that's doing the living of our lives. It's a
conundrum,
a paradox.
The truth is it's easier living
the paradox
of omitting who we really are, than
stepping up
to being in the inquiry into it. Ease ranks higher on our
life-preferences' scale than profundity. So we omit it out of hand,
mostly with nary a second thought. It's a convenient omission.