I keep bumping up against how I’d like to be and how I am. Recently, I wrote about my experience of “passing through” into a moment of connection, and about a dream showing me how my attitude creates my world. Alongside these wonderful insights of how I could be, I’m aware of how the smallest things irritate me, of how habitual patterns pull me away from my intentions.
Between these two me’s there seems to be quite a gap. And time is running out to pull them together. Except, am I even supposed to pull them together? Is that the point?
The longer I’m in this work, the more subtle working on myself becomes. I’ve learned so many techniques and practices, I’ve taken in so much information. What do I have to show for it? A question my children have put to me, alas.
There seems to be a fine line between working on or with the material at hand—i.e., me, and what I’m working towards. What is my aim? In the beginning, it was a big deal to see how much of my life I spent in a dream, basically stuck in my head. At that point, my aim was to come into my body and to awaken finer feelings. Of course, that work is on-going and never ending.
Seeing How I Am
More recently, the truth has dawned that it is never ending because I will always have certain characteristics that I wish I didn’t. So, is my aim to “fix” how I am? Or is my work to “see” how I am without judging myself? Herein lies the thin line between working on myself and what it is I’m working for. Can I bear to see myself as I am? To see how I move too quickly, how I don’t give you my full attention, how getting the desert forks in the desert-fork slot is so important it keeps me from being relaxed and ready for my meeting in five minutes?
THAT work, the work of seeing myself “in action,” creates a gap. It allows a different part of myself to see how I am and provides space to choose a different pattern. It also leaves room for laughing at myself— “there she goes again!” Or as a warning, “watch out, here you go again.”
But the question remains, am I just trying to make myself a better person? Is my work about merging the picture of how I’d like to be with how I am? Or is it about the gap? About transforming something beyond personality that has to do with energies, with essence and with being. I don’t know yet; I’m still working on it as the person that I am.
I have a little bar towel we bought in London that is a good reminder for me, “Mind the gap”. Seems to fit whether your at the subway or at home.
HI Pat, thanks for sharing that – I think it’s a good point and I love the idea of your bathroom bar reminder!
Yeah, we need that bar towel for every room in the house.
It’s in the seeing. The fixing flows in its own good time from the seeing.
Good insight!
Thanks
Roberta, you might be interested to read the third paragraph on pg. 182 of Deeper Man. The last sentence is “What sees is nothing in itself and should never be given a material identity as if it were a ‘something’ in its own right.” There is a lot to ponder when it is put this way.
Thank you, Lance. The “Nothing that sees” sounds like a gap kind of thing. If I don’t get too tangled up with this as a thought, it kind of helps with the notion of separating from the act of seeing to move into the allowing of seeing.