Life is an experiment, a giant laboratory where we test out different choices, people, ideas and thoughts. We are constantly trying to get to the bottom of it, figure it out, discover how it works, find out what we are meant to do with it, and why it is so damn elusive.
What is the meaning of it?
The big it?
Life?
What if the answer is not out there,
but in here?
What if we are it?
As kids we are given a lot of advice on how reality works. Advice like: if you don’t work hard you won’t get anywhere. That’s reality. Or, you’re not going to daydream your way to success. That’s reality. Or, being an artist is not going to pay the bills. That’s reality. We take this advice and cobble together what we think is ‘how reality works.’
But it isn’t what we think at all. It’s a second-hand philosophy. It has no life force of its own. It is oblique, uncreative and intractable, until we see that it’s not real—that it’s a big fat fake. That reality is defined by individual perception. And when that moment of clarity comes, after we’ve been lugging around our second-hand philosophy of the “way reality works,” we discover IT is the BIGGEST and ONLY obstacle in our way of living authentically as who we are.
But it isn’t what we think at all. It’s a second-hand philosophy. It has no life force of its own. It is oblique, uncreative and intractable, until we see that it’s not real—that it’s a big fat fake. That reality is defined by individual perception. And when that moment of clarity comes, after we’ve been lugging around our second-hand philosophy of the “way reality works,” we discover IT is the BIGGEST and ONLY obstacle in our way of living authentically as who we are.
Sometimes it takes a life-threatening illness.
My husband believed for 25 years that reality worked like a pyramid. If you keep building one thing on top of another stacking and carrying around the totality of your history, eventually you end up at the top. After pulling out of a 35% chance of surviving non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his oncologist told him, you are free now, to do anything you want.
That’s how it happens—from pyramid to wide-open road in one sentence, after a lifetime of relentless building. Obviously, it doesn’t mean, Wahooo! No more pain and suffering. Finally the life of bliss I was hoping for. It just means once your steadfast definition of reality gets smashed, you are free to experiment with life.
My husband believed for 25 years that reality worked like a pyramid. If you keep building one thing on top of another stacking and carrying around the totality of your history, eventually you end up at the top. After pulling out of a 35% chance of surviving non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his oncologist told him, you are free now, to do anything you want.
That’s how it happens—from pyramid to wide-open road in one sentence, after a lifetime of relentless building. Obviously, it doesn’t mean, Wahooo! No more pain and suffering. Finally the life of bliss I was hoping for. It just means once your steadfast definition of reality gets smashed, you are free to experiment with life.
Sometimes it does not take near death or great loss.
Sometimes just by craving and seeking freedom desperately enough and long enough we are propelled by grace into deeper personal truth.
For me it happened with the writing of this book. First, I thought according to the “way reality works,” I would need all kinds of letters after my name to really be qualified to talk about circuitous paths, inter-human connection and disruption. I would need to research every facet about which I was speaking from map-making to world religion to technology.
Sometimes just by craving and seeking freedom desperately enough and long enough we are propelled by grace into deeper personal truth.
For me it happened with the writing of this book. First, I thought according to the “way reality works,” I would need all kinds of letters after my name to really be qualified to talk about circuitous paths, inter-human connection and disruption. I would need to research every facet about which I was speaking from map-making to world religion to technology.
The quest became circular and overwhelming. So, I stopped and spoke with my intuitive guide, Susan. She told me this:
You don’t have to be an expert at all these other things. Write about what you know, what you love. You are an expert there. No one else can write what YOU have to say. Write THAT book.
That’s how it happens—from self-doubt to pure possibility. A magical moment when an unshakable reality is smashed to smithereens. It is breath-taking and breath-giving—it brings forward to new life.
You don’t have to be an expert at all these other things. Write about what you know, what you love. You are an expert there. No one else can write what YOU have to say. Write THAT book.
That’s how it happens—from self-doubt to pure possibility. A magical moment when an unshakable reality is smashed to smithereens. It is breath-taking and breath-giving—it brings forward to new life.
In life, (no matter how long or short that lifetime may be) an unseen momentum leads us to a tipping point where true essence can be seen. It happens for everyone at some moment in some space in time.
And it requires a fierce kind of courage (from the French coeur meaning heart) to let it all go—the very gravity of your reality—and begin, anew.
And it requires a fierce kind of courage (from the French coeur meaning heart) to let it all go—the very gravity of your reality—and begin, anew.
