Two feral piglets, abandoned by mother, making their way in the world. With no authority to guide them, they figure out what to eat, where to sleep, when to run from a creature and when to embrace. We think if that was us on our own like that we’d be scared out of our minds.
Their tails are wagging like happy, confident dogs. Their oinks are delightful.
***
Some say we attract our expectations, but what we actually do is select them, for they reenforce our worldview. Our role in that attraction process is active, not passive. The commonly held belief that your conscious self is a puppet of a deeper unconscious self is true—but they are both you. You are not passively controlled by repressed impulses, you are actively repressing them. You were given cues from parents, society, and the land herself as to what is acceptable thought and behavior and what is not. You edited yourself accordingly as you grew into a fine adult editor.
Now here you are. Existing. And you want to exist. So, you select and deny things that aid you in existing. To allow for the edited material is to change yourself. Each change carries with it a fear of not existing anymore. This is why we bastardize appealing unknowns, water them down, and make them our own: because we want to add to ourselves, not be altered in an unrecognizable way.
But why do we take the risk in the first place? Why do we learn anything new that has the potential of altering us? It’s because deep, deep down we know what we are. And what we are is No-Thing. We are not just all of the things we’re editing out but also the emptiness in which they float along. We run from true wholeness by embracing our edited wholeness and calling that true. True wholeness is an affront to what we’ve deemed true. And yet… that’s us! It’s kinda crazy.
And you know this is the fact, all of this is the fact, every time you do something that rubs against the fabric of your true nature, which is always, and a little voice that is your own squeaks out, “This is wrong.” The voice rubs against your edited nature and so it is kept tiny, seen past, and argued against.
There is no such thing as “It just happened” when it comes to our decisions in life. But, oh, man, how we wish it were otherwise. We’ll unconsciously set up an obstacle course that makes it feel like we’re going somewhere hard-won if it means drowning out the tiny, nagging roar of Truth: “This is wrong.” We’ll teach workshops on how to attract everything we want in life, as if we’ve mastered something, just to appease the voice: “This is wrong.”
There is no permanently escaping. There is no appeasing. There is only losing it temporarily to the amnesia that comes with a new high as we ascend in our learning, dive into stale ways of thinking that feel new, bask in our accomplishments from failures, delight in our reflections, and breathe in the strength of our perseverance. No, nothing forever quells Truth because through our strong, forward momentum, a voice: “This is wrong.”
Finally, a light at the end. The goal. The finish line. Where we’ve been heading this whole time. It was worth it, blocking that voice. I can see it… I can see it….
Oh.
Uh-oh.
A coffin.
We’ve been taking the secret of the little voice to our graves this whole time. The cemetery is choked with caskets carrying the exact same little secret. We never knew life at all.
The hogs, now grown, are rooting for us. Tails swinging. Snouts oinking.