We come into this world as infants who surely seem more merged with deeper aspects of Being, or whatever you’d like to call it, than those who have been here a while. It takes time for us to train our attention consistently to this particular physical environment. Somewhere during that process we achieve a benchmark level of, at least perceived, separation.
When I was 6 my we moved into a larger house in a new neighborhood closer to the university where my father worked. It was full of children. After a week or so, I don’t really remember, I went to my mother and said “I don’t think that there is anyone in the neighborhood my age”. She said, “Well, Christine Daley is about your age”. In that instant I realized that she’d known that there was no one my age and had kept that from me. In my little mind I thought that if I couldn’t trust her to be honest with me, I was really alone in the world. That declaration, in that silent moment, made it effectively so. Many decades later I remembered this event at some Landmark course where they were specifically looking for such a “break in belonging”. I went to share what I’d seen with my mother and before I was even done she said, “I remember that. I regretted it the moment that I said it but it was too late”. Even she saw the impact that it had on me and remembered it all those years later.
It seems to me that at least one component of the process of being trained to be in this physical world comes in some form of a declaration that “I am alone”. It may be “nobody loves me, I’m not good enough, I don’t fit in” but is something along those lines. The “I”, in that moment of declared separateness, realizes that it must take responsibility for its choices as a solitary individuated entity. If it is going to survive in this world – to get what it needs and wants – it’s got to take charge and make it happen since it cannot guarantee the same resolve from anyone else. Given that on some level that each of us does have to make our own way, it makes sense that we do have to come to that declared state at some point.
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I Am Alone, or NotRead More »
