fire

Living truth

How could you know who you were going to be as an adult when you were a six or seven year old child? Sure you had some idea around the ages of seven and eight, when you first figured out a perspective. But chances are by the time you reached your late teens you had other ideas and perhaps life was taking you in another direction. But just how close were you to the mark when you were say 17 years old?

So here we all are, in another incarnation, another life cycle, each of us having made an individual journey to reach this point. We have memories, we have stories, we can all think back and remember experiences. We are all here for more or less the same reason. We are here to figure out life and what it means. We are here to seek truth, and conscious awareness, maybe some knowledge, and maybe some wisdom.

So what's your part in the grand scheme of things?

You see I'm writing this, and you are reading this, and all around us in our environment there is so much abundance, so much wealth, so much peace, and yet still so much out there still to enjoy and experience. In this relative moment of peace, and calm, as I write, and you read, there are many who cannot be here, who cannot share this connection or these moments. There are literally millions who will never get to read these words. These are people who are struggling, or fearful, or anxious, or busy doing things to ward off the darkness and terrors that have arisen from other human minds.

There are people out there alone on the streets. There are hungry people. People shivering in the cold. People who are on their own. People who are working and tired, and they're thinking how best to make use of what little money they have. People who are not looking forward to holidays such as Christmas because of memories of the past. Others not looking forward to Christmas for fears of the future. People who are struggling with illnesses, mental health issues and so much more. I'm referring here to people who have been caught up in the struggles that, in the here and now, they are unable to connect with us today.

But we can be with them. We can even connect with them, simply by not excluding them. This is by understanding, as Shakespeare once wrote, that all the world's a stage, and that, in this totality, we are all merely players and performers on a stage.

You see we are not special. We are merely cast in this unfolding drama to play our parts.

To think of someone who is starving, or suffering, this is not to elicit or create guilt, though this might be an initial reaction. This is also not to elicit shame, or the feeling that we could be doing more, but we're not, which could be another response or a reaction. This is just to put into perspective what part we are playing in all this. You see if you are busy with shame or guilt, you won't be able to perceive what your part is.

Some years ago I was living in Warsaw in Poland and working in theatre. I rented an apartment for a while in the centre of Warsaw, on the main thoroughfare through the centre of Warsaw from east to west, Aleja Jerozolimskie. A couple of streets behind the block stood once the walls to the Warsaw Ghetto. Across the street a plaque commemorated the fact that in 1940 some 105 Jews and Poles were summarily executed on the street by the occupying Nazi forces. Taken from a building, lined up against the wall, and shot. There were different resistance movements at the time. A leading Polish Jewish dramatist, Zygmunt Turkow, director and actor at the time fled. Another, Leon Kruczkowski, was captured by the Nazis and spent the war in camps. All were needed to somehow play their part so that after the war the Polish capital Warsaw could be rebuilt.

seagulls

Mother Nature does not hand out individual roles. Only the species and the environment matters. If you say come across a flock of seagulls on a beach and you get too close, all the seagulls will take flight and fly away. The seagulls wouldn't leave behind their weakest and most vulnerable as humans would. The seagulls also would not start fighting and attacking each other, as humans would. Individual roles are a matter of Ego more than anything else because they're all social, cultural and individual. But it's also important to understand that each part of this human drama, enhances the other parts. Furthermore each part of this human drama is what makes other parts of the human drama possible.

But how can we know what our part is?

In the face of seemingly infinite possibilities, what is the part we play in this unfolding human drama? What do we bring to the table? What is our value, our worth or that of our lives to other human beings? Or indeed, who are we and what is our value to the entire human species as a whole?

The answer is of course that we cannot know what our value or significance is, we can only be who we are and we can only be our contribution to humanity. This was the point made by Mahatma Gandhi on a train pulling out of a station in India, when a journalist rushed up to him and asked "Mahatma G, give me a message to take back to the people.." The train was already moving and Gandhi was near an open window, the journalist running beside the train. Gandhi grabbed a paper bag, tore a piece of paper off and scribbled on it, "My life is my message."

This is the point. Your life is your message, just as my life is my message. Or your story, or your narrative, or your biography.

But here I want to emphasize that I'm not writing about a role here or a social role, but something greater or more significant - our part in the human species, this planet, even the universe. I'm writing about something here that we are all born into. You see most of us live all too frequently in a kind of conditional 'what I will be when' type of existence.

  • If only (I was/I had).....
  • As soon as the kids are grown up.
  • As soon as I complete my education or studies.
  • As soon as I find another job.
  • As soon as I have the money.
  • As soon as my divorce is finalized.
  • As soon as I can get away from home.
  • As soon as I find myself in a relationship.
  • As soon as I love to London.
  • As soon as I move out of London.
  • As soon as I have more security.

As soon as I have my life together and ducks in a row I will know what my life is about and what my part is. Only what's happening here is that you're living between the past and the future. You're living almost entirely on the basis of memory, and out of memory you're conceptualizing everything into some future. This is where we get into role play, because that is what you're doing. You're role playing at life, on the basis of Ego and this is probably because everybody is doing it and what you've been conditioned to do, right from childhood.

seagulls

Appointing yourself the judge

Living life in Ego mode is of course much easier, and in some ways simpler, but it's virtually impossible to do without making value judgments. This is good. This is bad. This is right. This is wrong. This is better. This is worse. I don't like myself. I don't like him. I don't like her. I'm not keen on them. But see if you were taken with a group of people out to some forest and spend say a holiday each in your own log cabin it might be different. You would see different trees and nature and just accept it for what it is and maybe appreciate it. Or would you start arguing that oak trees are better than beech trees, or pine trees are messier than deciduous trees?

But when you get human beings around other human beings we all seem to slide back into judgmental mode. Have you also noticed this?

So while living life in Ego mode, as a 'Somebody' is easier and in some ways simpler, in other ways it's not because you're drawn right back into a persistent conflict between self and other and go right back into 'Judge Judy' mode. So you end up being right back with the internal conflict. Is it me? Is it them? You see when you get stuck in this mode you end up pushing, shoving, judging, complaining, expecting, and so on. Nothing is ever right, because this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong. You see how this all works?