|
"BE"
I like to reflect on my thoughts early in the morning when all is quiet. This morning I’m reflecting on the spirit and artistry of Jon Batiste (musician). He is electrifyingly creative playing multiple instruments but mostly the piano. When he speaks, his genuineness resonates deeply. Having already multiple grammy awards, he was recently awarded the Ray Charles Architect of Sound award at the Grammy Hall of Fame Gala.
Without a written page hidden in his pocket, he accepted this honor by simply speaking from his heart. He credited how much Ray Charles meant to him when he was 11 years old. He said that when he heard Charles’ music, he knew it had meaning, and it was the deepness of this meaning that mattered to him so “I just kept chasing that meaning.”
Have you had the experience of being suspended in time because of something someone said or someone entered a room that resonated some deep part of you that maybe you didn't even know you had? The body becomes still, sometimes not moving at all, but our body consciousness recognizes the vibration even if we cognitively don’t know what’s happening. This is meaning, and this path leads to our core Self.
Think of the capital letter T. Now think of the crossbar as time flowing day after day, year after year....millennium after millennium as the earth rotates the sun. The flow of time carries our historical development, our cultures, and collective circumstances. We naturally build cognitive concepts to communicate and 'explain' what we experience, which has helped us survive. Creating cognitive concepts based on truth has been a helpful advance for humankind. For example, many concepts were created by first peoples to understand an eclipse. For instance, Cherokee people had the need to make noise outside during an eclipse "to scare away a giant frog who was trying to eat the sun or moon" (AI generated search). This concept likely was in the service of security and agency.
Concepts however are cognitive structures. They are not living experiences. They are meant to guide, communicate, and shape living experiences. Concepts can be created entirely from the mind without a relationship to reality (delusions) but they can also change the more truth we discover, such as the nature of an eclipse.
Now think of the vertical line that is a part of the letter T. Think of this as the upward developmental movement of life coming from the ground, that is, from biology/Earth. Like a new sprout that suddenly pierces the ground and now grows into a plant, flower, ear of corn…its destiny, we humans are born, grow, and (hopefully) find our destiny before we leave. Now let’s say this hardwired developmental process carries feeling and that feeling has a particular consciousness or awareness that is nonverbal, implicit, and primary. Let's also assume the glue for this vertical upward process requires a responsive attuned feeling/relationship/love.
What if this upward growth towards one's destiny gets caught by some concept floating by in time?
I have played with this scenario a thousand times. Can the concepts riding in the current flow of time confuse or distort Self expression or love? You already know the answer to this!
Ruth Whippman (America the Anxious: How our pursuit of happiness is creating a nation of nervous wrecks, 2016, p. 109), a Brit reacting to living in America commented, “The longer we spend in America, the more I notice a deep-seated cultural squeamishness about children experiencing negative emotions, with adults constantly intervening to present or reframe them.” Instead of picking up a screaming child who doesn’t want to leave the park, Whippman noticed a mother pleading with the screaming toddler by saying, “Tell me how I can support you through this" (p. 110).
Wow!
Whippman finds that we Americans (at least the upper middle class) seem to believe a child should be happy at all times. Another toddler in a playgroup gives his fire truck to a little girl he is playing with so ‘she gets a turn.’ The other parents are feeling 'aww' so sweet when the "boy’s mom barrels in, grabs the fire truck off the little girl and hands it back to her son saying to the shocked adults, ‘We’re teaching him that he doesn’t always have to share’ ” (p. 116).
Double Wow!
This toddler has just been imprinted by a concept the mother has during a particularly crucial biologically driven development period when parents shape their children to fit into the world. But what has this child really learned? He has learned (especially if this pattern is regularly repeated) that he must slice off his feelings of caring for his friend to learn a ‘concept’ given by his mother that is diametrically opposed to his body's truth system. What the mother misses entirely is that he wanted to share with his friend, that is, his own Self expression, his own agency.
Let’s play with this and add that perhaps the mother’s own mother died when she was 9 leaving her to take care of her younger siblings at her father's insistence. Since money was short, sharing was expected. This mother never went through the typical stages of being a teen, finding and expressing one's own individuality so arrived in adulthood with a strong desire not to have her child experience what she did. This is an implicit pattern that Nature uses to entrain the young into the environment born into. However, continuing this unexamined pattern will affect her son in ways she surely doesn’t intend. This kind of ‘all me first’ strategy can (and usually does) corrupt instincts, confuses the Self, and leads to folks living in horizontal time only.
Somehow we must grow upward through time and not land in a meaningless roulette slot based on yet another unexamined concept to follow as if it will lead 'upward.' For me, who is also an intense meaning seeker, the way upward is to seek beauty and pause and reflect on every moment of resonance. Body resonance means something is very meaningful to our capital Self. And it is unique to us so what resonates for me may not for you and vice versa. Resonance means we need to reflect deeply on the 'why does it resonate for me' and try to find the words that represent what it means. Adding accurate-enough words to resonance gives us integration...and a deeper understanding of Self. This is a 'must-do' for wholeness.
Returning from the San Diego Symphony this afternoon where Rafael Payare, a Venezuelan, conducted a full stage orchestra in Mahler’s Third Symphony, Letter to Nature, I have this resonance carrying these thoughts. If someone can write something this complex (Mahler), lead it with such sensitivity (Payare), perform it with the precision of over 70 musicians playing 20 different instruments (San Diego Symphony Orchestra), and transform the individuals seated into the unified realms where love hangs out, we can do anything. Instead of pursuing happiness, we might consider pursuing meaning to find our core Self. The pursuit of money, power, status are all shams that scream in neon lights the loss of Self.
Follow what is beautiful; follow what we love.
In 1981 my father sent me a message pasted on a card that says “Read not the Times, read the Eternities” from Henry David Thoreau. He always liked this saying because it pointed to the difference between the 'times' and Life itself. He had this on his desk for many years but said, "I think it now needs to move on.”
"I think it does too; it's now yours to have."
We, and all of our Children need this.
The above photo is one of my latest collages. I initially entitled it, "Natural Forms" but the more I look at it, the more it wants to be known as "BE."
| 
