Principles 2 and 3
I decided to share my musings about the next two principles/realities of rites of passage together as to me they seem so closely related.
The second reality is, ‘you are not that important’ and the third is ‘your life isn’t about you’.
What!?! Really? After spending all this time trying to feel important and that my life is mine alone you want to tell me it isn’t so!? I can just hear the comments in some people’s minds as they read this; it so flies in the face of so much of what we seem to be being told in our New Age/New Thought/Personal Development teachings.
I learned long ago that humans have two basic needs, to belong and to feel important. Operative word here is ‘human’. In our all too human state of separation and illusion we do indeed have strong desires for both of those because we have cut ourselves off from our True Self. In order to maintain this state of illusion we need to do whatever we can to feel important and that we belong.
I don’t know about you, but try as I might, my small self has always somehow fallen short of attaining these states, and I have tried, believe me. I made most of my life about me on some level, even when I was doing things for others. And when I didn’t feel satisfied because it was an unconscious urge that I was not even aware of most of the time, I felt very discouraged and disappointed indeed. And I am so very grateful that I did. It was only through the oft repeated failures and disappointments that I was finally led to realize what was really going on; I was unwittingly trying to maintain the very illusion I wanted to be free of.
Without failure and no small degree of humiliation, I would likely have kept trying till the day I died to achieve self-importance and to make life all about me. As uncomfortable and as much as I resisted the shame and guilt and humiliation, these proved to be gifts in this initiation to a different paradigm of life.
The truth is the ego, the small, personal self really is not all that important. We see the evidence of this everywhere. Think of all those young men who are used as canon fodder in war, all the people who die of poverty and starvation every day, the fact that things like viruses infect people from every socio/economic/spiritual circle just to name a few of the ways we individually are not all that important. We incarnate, we blossom, we wither, and we die. We have some impact while we’re here but for most of us that is restricted to a very small sphere of influence. We are not that important.
Our lives are not about us either. There is something much greater than this physical being to whom my life, your life, all life belongs. It’s easy to talk about oneness is spirit but what does that mean in our daily lives? In our illusion of separation, we so often forget that we live not only for our benefit but for that of the whole. Just imagine what our world would look like if we really got this. Our decision-making process would certainly have to change because when we realize that we are part of the whole, we need to think and act for the greater good of all, not just ourselves or our special interest group.
The world we have created is on the brink of some pretty major disasters and even this pandemic has shown us what can happen when we are more worried about our little self than the whole. As far as I can tell, unless we make a significant shift in where we are coming from in the decisions we make, our ship will sink. We need to think not only about the lives of all people and all creatures here now but in the future. We can’t afford the luxury, if you can call it that, of thinking it’s only about me.
We are all part of a greater idea, the True Self which is also this Universe. It is from this consciousness that we realize our true significance which is quite different from self-importance. This pandemic, our current planetary crises are calling us out of the illusion. We can’t do it alone; we need each other and if we are going to truly resolve our situation, we need to do it from a higher consciousness than the one that created it as Einstein reminded us. We need to turn around and remember what we are.
I could go on and on, but you get my drift. I know I got pretty preachy here but there is a sense of urgency I cannot ignore. I hope you can’t either.
Namaste
