Somewhere on the Open Sea…
A few years ago, I was in an Antique shop, browsing among the colorful old books, looking for a book to set on an easel and decorate my plant ledge.
Having once made my living as an Interior Designer and decorative painter, I have very specific tastes and a home that reflects a commitment to beauty and order.
I found just the right book, colorful, fun, playful, with a young boy on the cover and with the necessary age and patina, in a shop in the downtown district of my City. While purchasing it, I struck up a conversation with the woman who owned the shop; she too, was an antique. At least 75, she was time worn, threadbare, bent, and growing hair where women are not meant to, (or at least don’t want to).
I can’t remember the context of our conversation, only its last sentiment. We must have been talking about, “The Future”, or some derivation thereof…because her last line was…”I’m still waiting for my ship to come in”.
I remember the line, its delivery, and the poignancy with which she said it to this day…at least four years later. The sadness of the sentiment oozed out all around me, even though she was not aware of my emotional response to her message. It implied without doubt, that her 70 plus years of life had not brought with it, satisfaction, contentment, or prosperity. Her ship. It’s wealth, lost and rudderless, somewhere on the open sea.
I suppose it was the curtain about to draw closed on a life spent waiting for an illusion that struck me so, and made me sad for her and her Lost Ship’s worth of personal treasure.
I have a friend who is stuck in this exact same tide pool. He talks of becoming a famous actor, though he has no acting skills and none of the requisite passion for the craft of acting. He talks of getting rich, winning the Lottery, or in some other way stumbling across great fortune. He imagines that “rich” people are somehow unique and special; somehow exempt from the trials and tribulations that he believes plague his, “head just above water”, minimum income lifestyle.
Once I tried to peel back this illusory view of a life lived with the means necessary to purchase whatever one might fancy, as being free from troubles and sorrows…he got mad at me.
I said,”Every life has its limitations. Every life is filled with challenges. Every life has sadness, sorrows, disappointments, the wealthy are not immune to this…and in some ways they might actually have more than their share of burdens and disappointments.
(They are not afforded the luxury of an illusion that allows them to believe, “if I only had money life would work for me, I would be happy, life would be easy”, they know money won’t fix it. They know better than to be waiting for that particular ship to dock, it would be a waste of time indeed.)
Can they buy better fantasies? Of course, they can. Does that free them from pain or heartache? Of course, it doesn’t.
Most people define freedom, financial or other, as the right to do what you please, as you please, when you please. For me, that is the working definition of chaos and a life without merit.
Limitations are the shape of your Soul, brought to you specifically for the growth and aggregate gain of depth and breadth, which is necessary for you to become more truly yourself.
I point to Christopher Reeves, as a remarkable example of this process in action. Early in his acting career, clad in blue tights and a red S, he looked every inch the Free-to-do-as-he-pleased-Hero. A take-charge guy, with pearly whites, coal black hair and the requisite V shaped chest. He got the girl, the respect, the applause, and the rewards…but of course, that was just the movies.
Contrast that image, with the man just prior to his death.
Helpless, (at least physically), immobile, wasting away, tied to a ventilator its unnatural pace, dictating his speech and making his rhythms artificial and stiff. And yet, he was the very picture of grace and dignity. His soul shone. His wisdom was revealing itself. All because of the limitations his Soul had chosen for him.
Every life, and every form of life, is required to have limitations. Or chaos would ensue and balance would be lost. Just as prey have predators, Summer’s glory kneels to Winters demands, Life bows its head in supplication to Death, and Light must end with Darkness…all going out, must result in a coming back.
Most humans resent and resist this natural order. We want all things to prosper indefinitely, to march upward without waver or penalty, to exceed our wildest imaging’s and allows us a berth on a glory train we don’t have any right to.
This is pure fantasy and the arena of the immature.
Over time, with help and a constant desire to mature myself, I have come to see the wisdom of the Soul bringing limitations to my doorstep. More than that, I have come to see the wisdom of choosing my own limitations as well.
Gone are the days that I wished for unending fun, sun, friends and parties…to be replaced with Silence, Harmony, Rhythm and most prized of all, Understanding.
Understanding is the “Pearl of Great Price”, it manifests only for those who have paid her price-steep as it is, costly as it is, demanding as it is.
She favors restraint over bombast, humor over wit, kindness over sophistication, gentleness over dominance…she provides just enough of herself to keep you moving ever forward, just enough light to keep the path illuminated for only the length of your own shadow in front of you…never the whole way, or past the curve in the road ahead, so as to keep you mindful of her desire for limitations and the use they have in the development of the Self.
To aid and develop her companionship, I have begun to choose limitations and to commit myself to their use.
In the physical I choose to eat little or no processed foods and to exercise five times a week. In the financial I purchase only needs and very infrequently wants. In the professional, even in this time where I cannot find a job, I show up at this keyboard, as though I am making a living from it. In my home, I have a place for everything; everything in its place and beauty prevails.
In the Spiritual, I remember that the only choice that has any relevance at all is the one that chooses Truth over Illusion.
You can easily make the mistake of thinking that choosing Truth means to force others to believe the same way you believe, or honor the same rituals and traditions you honor. That form of “truth” is Truth lost.
Truth in its righteousness, in its right-use-ness, is a total dedication to the qualities of the moment that arises directly in front of you, exactly as you find it…without opinion or editing. The line you are standing in that doesn’t seem to move, the car who just cut you off in traffic, the lost luggage, the upturned plans, the demands on your time, the lost job…or even, the accident that stole the use of your limbs.
To say Yes to these limitations, to honor the moment as it arrives…never searching for some other place in the path, some other road to travel this is the “right-use-ness” of Truth. This acceptance of the moment forces you to reach inside to find the only location actual freedom exists. The Inner World.
Having once been an Associate Minister for a New Age church, I spent plenty of time building a lecture or workshop series, around the idea of truth. An Idea I did not have the right to propose, as I had not the requisite understanding, or right use of the very tool I was proposing to teach others to use. Born out of my escape from the confines of a religious childhood that taught Hellfire and brimstone, I gravitated toward a religion that promised abundance, happiness, and ease. It fit my, living in the future, personality. As the years passed and my understanding matured, I again had to leave the confines of the “New Religion” I had attached myself to…in favor of the demands and disciplines of the moment by moment Truth.
Can I, Will I, Am I, capable of accepting this moment just as it arrives? No bargaining. No complaining. No protesting. No turning away. Here is where Life happens. Now is when it happens. If I find myself unwilling to accept this moment, always choosing the re-engineered past or the illusory future, then there is no hope for a reunion, in this life, with the Soul I came into this world from and to which I will return.
Ask yourself; can I learn to separate fantasies of the mind from the form this moment takes? Can I live for today, instead of righting some imaginary wrong in the past, or fantasizing about the future?
Almost all, emotional pain is a derivative of resisting the current moment, and as such is a painful form of self-denial and a loss of connection to the Soul and her greatest handmaiden Understanding.
In this poem by David Wagoner, we find the solution to all our impatient wanderings and lack of fulfillment. He reminds us we must be willing to Stand still…
“Lost
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.”
Until Tomorrow...
R.
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