Fumbling Towards Enlightenment

Easter is an interesting day in our household.  For my husband, who was brought up with a traditional and more dogmatic approach to Christianity he has this quiet way of celebrating.  In many ways, it is who he is, and I wonder, if it also has to do with him respecting me and my views.  I appreciate him in all ways, and in this particular way also.  The way we both show up in this way, it's why we can be together, raise a family the way we do, have real, vulnerable, straight-from-the-heart conversations (sometimes ;) about everything.

For me, I reflected so much today on this idea that we can be born again into new personalities, new patterns, new people--we can shed the old and rise up from that deep place of misunderstanding, ignorance, and into new awareness.

As my family and I walked along the reservoir and found signs of Spring-small crocuses, maturing skunk cabbage, a fuzzy green draped across the edge of the wood, the sun still hanging high in the sky at 5:00pm; the local country boys shedding their winter coats for galoshes and fishing rods.  I found a deer skull and thought how fascinating that even this, it's rot and compost, gave birth to the baby green fescue poking up between its' eye sockets. Anew again.

Going for a run (these things always happen when I am out for a run), I also had this incredible new (old) awareness rise up inside of me!   I had various emotions come up and out as I often do when I spend some time with my extended family (my sister's family and my aunt came for the weekend).  I then began to think about my father, and realized this:  for all of who he is, for all of who I am, for all of who anyone is, we are all trying, without even trying to become the next version of who we are.   AND, without even realizing, sometimes we can become wrapped up inside the feeling we are having, rather than connect to it, learn from it, and awaken to the fact that it is something passing through us-it's not a thing that belongs to us, OR IS us.  Ok, that doesn't really do what I was feeling/thinking justice (and I just knew this would happen when I tried to write this out-ha!)  So, whatever, I am going to just go for the sloppy and messy.  This might make my point more or less confusing, I am not attached to the reaction or level of acceptance I'll have over this being a "good" or "bad" blogpost...for right now anyway--

Here, let me try to explain it like this (might be an even stranger, or gruesome, route):  I saw this turkey vulture just doing it's thing, picking away at a roadkill-squirell on the run, and I thought, "Hmm, she doesn't even have to think about who she is becoming-she just is.  There's no emotion, there is just this whole survival piece, just doing the best with whatever conditions are present, and the tuning in of instinct.  So, sure, to relate this to humans is quite a different thing because we have got this whole frontal-cortex and more highly developed brain.  We've got this whole emotion thing down, er, or so we think.  I, for one, do incredilbe amounts of work to get clear with what I am feeling, and then being both loving and direct in explanation of said emotions.  I think a lot of folks are doing that, and then maybe a whole lot who aren't, and for the sake of evolving humanity, probably could.

Anyway, without too much digression, I began to think about how we all have attachments-I'm going to call it pride for now, to certain varying degrees of emotions.  I know the gal who loves (is proud of) her anger; a woman who I don't doubt proud of her loyalty; the man who I suspect has become his resentment he is so attached; and the righteous folk (Oh, GOODNESS, how I can become attached to my righteousness); and shame, oh that one makes me sad, but folks who might not neccessarily become proud of their shame, but spend so much time there, wallow really, that they become it. Folks who are attached to their "specialness"

Now of course, mind you, in my humblest (and possibly most self-righteous ;) of opinions, I do think we've all experienced and then teetered over to "becoming" all of these things at one moment or another.  The realization, for me, though, became that we can "birth ourselves" through these and recognize these emotions just for what they are.  We can free ourselves in this way that the emotion is not what makes us who we are.  Our inclination towards feeling a certain way, may shape part of who we are, but the higher path is to recognize that being present, based on empirical evidence in the felt-sense, and then perhaps the less visceral "heart-feeling" into something (one might call this compassion, or empathy), and the greater intuiting into both your internal and external world, may indeed be the deeper "rising up" or the one that resonates for me, anyway.

Miracles are happening everyday, and whether the stone is being rolled away from ones' heart, or in the literal sense, rolled away from a great human-for many a Savior's, tomb in the utmost profound sense, to awaken the Truth in other's who doubt, are overly-attached to their "personalities".  To make anew, what has become stale.  Or to completely shed and transmute.  To refresh, remember, understand something that is more deelpy liberating than calling to judge.  For me, this is so beautiful, so exciting, so profound!

Tristan asked me last night, after his cousin who was declaring sweetly that Easter is the most important thing ever, "Mamma, what's the most important thing?"  A bit thrown off I said, "Well you, of course.  And Charlotte, and Ben..." I proceeded to name everyone in the room, "...and everyone in the world."  And Love.  Love is the most important thing to me."

Once I was told there was no way my husband and I with such varying beliefs and philosophies could raise our children successfully.  While still, and sometimes not having to do with religious differences, I worry about this myself, I also know we all have our own path to the Truth that lies in our own hearts.  As soon as the worry rises up, and I become the worry, I try to remember, that this is a simple judgement, and if I am able to let it go, or let it in sometimes, I can be who I be.  And not what I am feeling or thinking.

Whether enlightenment be through Jesus Christ or a deer skull, as long as we lift one another up (and, for Matt and I in regards to our family dynamic, lift Tristan and Brooks up) in the name of Love, and show eachother (them) a steadfast heart, one of folly and Divine potential, one with openness and a strong sense-of self, we're all gonna make it-we'll fumble, together, towards enlightenment.