Partrick Ridge, Mount Veeder Appellation, Napa Valley, California,
USA
March 23, 2021
"To make sure a person doesn't find out who they are, convince them
they can't really make anything
disappear."
...
Prior to the possibility of transformation in my life (indeed, prior to
the onset of transformation in my life), who I was for
myself was a confused product of all the decisions, conclusions, and
resistances
I'd laid down in response to
incidents,
dilemmas, and threats in my past.
Said another way, I didn't simply live as if what there was, was a
confused product of decisions, conclusions, and
resistances
I'd laid down (in response to
incidents,
dilemmas, and threats in my past) in addition to who I
really was. No, prior to the onset of transformation in my life, I
lived as if that was who I really was.
Look:
I get it.
There is no "is".
It's all up for being invented. So it's all way more malleable than it
may seem at first glance. In the light of this new malleability,
there's not one thing I can say I'm really sure about (and
that's a freedom, an opening). But if there were to be one
thing I could say I'm really sure about, it would be this: as a human
being, I'm not all that different than you; I'm not all that different
than other human beings; each of us are not as unique as we hold
ourselves out to be.
My survival mechanism and
ego
puts moi forward as (and tells me I'm) unique,
special, different, even rare. That's what the survival
mechanism and
ego
is designed to do. When the truth is told, you and I aren't all that
dissimilar. And inasmuch as we consider ourselves to be products of the
decisions, conclusions, and
resistances
to
incidents,
dilemmas, and threats in our past, we're
all
impostors
with respect to who we really are. In this way, we're
remarkably and uncannily similar, you and I.
As I open to the possibility of transformation in my life, a new view
emerges of who I really am, a view grounded in the person I really was
prior to making up those
survival-driven
decisions, conclusions, and
resistances.
Viewing who I am from being transformed, I barely recognize myself. I
see I'm not the decisions, conclusions, and
resistances
I once held myself to be. The real me I see emerging is
beyond form, beyond labels, even beyond limitations - and
certainly beyond space and time.
With regard to the survival view of being unique, special, different,
and rare: if I've got that going on, you have too. You and I after
all, are only illusorily unique. And if I, with the onset of
transformation, start to catch a glimpse of who I might be
really, then that may just be the possibility of who you might
be really too - prior to your own decisions, conclusions, and
resistances.
And here's the thing: if I keep knowing you as your decisions,
conclusions, and
resistances
ie if I keep on knowing you the way I've come to know you ie the way I
kept on knowing myself as my decisions, conclusions and
resistances,
then I keep all of us stuck in who we aren't.
I'm committed to
serving
people in a way that around me, we have the opportunity to discover who
we really are. So I give up knowing who you are ie I
surrender the certainty I have that I already know you, and that I
already know me. In the absence of being known only as our decisions,
conclusions, and
resistances
made in response to
incidents,
dilemmas, and threats in our pasts, both you and I emerge as being
unlimited possibility, as unfettered
exuberance.
Whomever I had you and I pegged as ie whomever I had you and I
be past-based, turns out to be just an unwitting case of mistaken
identity
ie just another ill-fitting alias, a misplaced "AKA".
Until we no longer consider that who are, is our decisions,
conclusions, and
resistances,
the best our interactions can ever be, will be as
impostorsacting
out a tedious pretense with each other, with all the exhausting old
one-upmanships, mind-games, and glaring inauthenticities with
which that particular world is so terribly fraught.
