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Last revised: Sept. 24, 2009.
One thing I'm noticing as a result of this past month of loss, loss, and more loss, is the drip, dripping away of self-importance, a process I am not fighting.
I've gotten to see how important it seems in our world to be important. Hollywood lays out our agenda, right? Sex, power, survival, good food, hot car, more sex. And all of these come easier to someone who's important.
Getting a job in our world seems to mean conveying somehow that I'll be important to the organization so confidence, warmth, and articulate speech are all desirable.
Attracting a date or a mate for life makes it desirable to "be somebody." (For a woman, it may mean something else entirely, I don't know). The mating ritual costs money and, if it is to result in marriage, is helped along if one has a well-paying job and sure prospects in life.
Having lost all my ID and passwords, followed several weeks later by losing all my correspondence, videos, pictures, music, and everything else on my computer plus security drive have left me with only this bliss, but with no artifacts of self-importance, no proof that I am somebody.
I do not feel important. I could not bluff my friends that I have any importance to any particular effort underway of any shape or variety.
Another mirror one can look in for the same feedback is the ageing process. I just heard from a friend the other day who was once an important man - a consummate networker, a spiritually-developed man. But the ageing process has caught up with him and his conversation reflected it.
In fact he is doing nothing much of importance these days although it took perhaps twenty minutes to communicate it. It is humbling having to admit that age has overtaken one.
Short of my building burning down, I haven't much left to lose.
Lest you think I'm complaining, I'm not. I'm coming closer and closer to the moment. I'm becoming much more familiar with the "me" that is here, which activities and possessions distracted me from.
Having always trusted in the Lord as my Shepherd, I have no fear for the future. All I have lost is merely trinkets and paper. And this bliss that keeps arising is more than compensation for not having things that cost lots of money, like exotic trips, HDTV, or hot cars.
I sit here, communing with my breath, the bliss increasing each moment I breathe deeply.
If anything I am happy at all the steps I have deliberately taken to remove myself from the rat race. There is very little, apart from my stomach, that takes me away from contemplating the Divine these days.
I used to be a finger puppet on the Hand of God informing all and sundry how important I was. Now I am a finger puppet on the hand of God with a decreasing sense of my separateness and only a desire to play my role as a finger, a part of the Hand, itself a part of the Body of God.
Namaste,
Steve
Links
The Essays of Brother Anonymous
Spiritual Essays
