"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 curiouser, 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 an inconvenient omission, and it's also
a convenient
omission.
Here's the inconvenient omission.
In a previous companion
piece
in this
Conversations For Transformation internet
series of essays,
I'd asserted that omitting who we really are from our lives, is mighty
"convenient" ie it's
a convenient omission.
And what's so convenient about it is it lets us off to commit to
nothing - nothing at all that is, except for surviving and allowing the
status quo to persist (the "status quo" being living our lives without
being responsible for who we really are). That is convenient.
I pass no judgement on it. It is
not wrong.
It's no
sin.
There is
no blame.
Life itself
offers an invitation. And an invitation (that is, any
authentic invitation) can be declined or
accepted. Like that, when
Life itself
invites us to be responsible for who we really are, it's OK to decline.
Really it is. For sure, it's OK to accept. But it's also OK to
decline. As already noted, when I look around I notice that declining
to be responsible for who we really are, is the status quo ...
... and yet ... under
relentless
scrutiny, I also notice that it's an in-convenient omission too.
What does that even mean, Laurence? What does it mean that omitting who
we really are, is an inconvenient omission? Indeed, how
can omitting who we really are, be both
a convenient omissionand an inconvenient omission?
Consider
this: it's convenient inasmuch as it lets us off to
survive yet avoid being responsible for who we really are, but then
it's inconvenient too inasmuch as avoiding being
responsible for who we really are, comes at a price, a price which in
actuality is a daunting one. Let's flesh out the latter further.
Here's what's always occurred to me as strange ie as an anomaly: how
can we, not having a handle on / not knowing who we really are, have
relationships
that work? 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 love
relationships.
We aspire to them. We covet them. We work hard at being in
them. Yet we don't know who or what we really are, in
relationships?
Then we fret our
relationships
don't work? Man! That's strange. Who woulda thunk?
(is it just me? am I the only one?).
And remember, we've omitted who we really are (the
convenient omission)
because then we don't have to be responsible for being who we really
are. But look: that also omits our capacity for having
relationships
that work. So that
convenient omission?
It's actually also an inconvenient omission. Take a look
around. Notice how
the world
doesn't work? And it's not just that it doesn't work "over
there".
The world
not working impacts all of us here - whether we're
directly in the conflict zone, or not. Look: if their end
of the canoe tips over, we all end up
in the water.
We've omitted who we really are (the
convenient omission)
because then we don't have to be responsible for being who we really
are. But that omits our capacity for having
the world
work for everyone too.
So that
convenient omission
of who we really are? It's actually an inconvenient omission. Being
seduced by the faux option of not being responsible for who we really
are, comes with a daunting price tag which reads
"The world
doesn't work.". And it's not that
the world
doesn't work over there, or that
the world
doesn't work "somewhere else", or that the
trouble
is on their watch but NIMBY (Not In
My Back Yard), or that
"the" world
isn't working in eg Europe. It's that
"our" world
doesn't work - period. It's a daunting price to pay for omitting being
responsible for who we really are in life. It's an inconvenient
omission.