None of us seem like we're really alone. Even hermits have visitors sometimes. And our minds are full of memories of others. If you think about it, those images as memories are no less real than images of living experiences.
Stay with me. Someone walks up to you and shakes your hand. You arrange to have lunch with them and later they move in. You become life long friends and do everything together. Now you can't get rid of the person. So you've got a companion. Has that person merged with you? Are they some real part of you?
Now let us take the hermit. This person has lived under the bridge (in an abandoned village, 7,500 miles from anywhere) for 14 years. Lived on bugs and roots. Pretty much gone totally whack but still has memories of her brothers and sisters who she hasn't seen since Nixon resigned. Those memories of playing London Bridge and Peek a Boo are vivid and clear. Her brothers and sisters seem to be part of her. Are those images less alive than the companion in the example above?
Does someone else live in our bodies with us? Except as memories and living experiences of friends and family ($19.95, includes a free phone), we're alone in our bodies. What we think we own, such as furniture and a car and clothes and cd's don't live with us in our bodies. The stuff isn't actually attached to us. When it comes down to it, the only thing we really own is our behavior. That is really the only thing we can actually change also.
Home Alone. Free to be our authentic self and free to try to be someone else, not our authentic self. No one to blame. No one to come to our rescue. No one to take credit. No one to feel guilty.
Naturally lots of people care. But the work is within. And oh, what hard work it is.
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As within, so without. Aloneness is, in my mind, a delusion. Though we appear to be separate, "reality" is actually contiguous and entangled (if you believe the physicists, and I do.)
ReplyDeleteWho said this? Can't remember, but it goes something like: The mediocre hermit lives in a cave, the exceptional hermit lives in the city.
You're exception in every way, you are. xx
well thanks! most of us who think along these lines understand the concept of duality and illusion. We also understand (intellectually and perhaps with a fair amount of intuitive cognition) that nothing is separate from ANYTHING.
ReplyDeleteBut like in the stages of enlightenment made famous by our beloved balladeer Donovan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALO7r41Hr5w) First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is, I believe we learn about the work within. How sacred and important it is and how very very difficult it is.