Always looking for Balance

Raymond Tekorako Ruka

Definition: In our Maori Language, Grandchild is, Mokopuna, Moko meaning: Sign or signature. Puna means a spring of water or of life.

Mokopuna is usually always used in its shortened form, i.e. Moko when used by the elders when addressing any grandchild.

We do something of goodwill, without holding an expectation of a predetermined outcome. Not that expected outcomes should ever be realized, for that should always be the goal. But life being life, there are sometimes surprises with unintended consequences. 

What is being considered is the degree of one’s own expectation and to where, or whose neck/s and shoulders should the garland of kudos, or the shame of blame be strewn around. 

Whenever we do something, irrespective of the circumstance is it natural to expect an outcome back, tit for tat? When, of course, the pre-ordained expectation is met or obtained we should always feel ratified and even satisfied. Our status as Hero or She’ro has been acknowledged. Our effort and therefore our importance in the outcome having been obtained has been established and acknowledged.

What greater prize can one’s own ego be rewarded with? A knighthood by King Charlie or a practice hoop throwing session, with ex-President Obama maybe? That would be grand for sure! But what came first, was it the expectation or the effort required? Which of the two held the greater degree of accomplishment, the Expectation, or the Effort?

My Grannies always asked us these types of questions and gave us all the time in the world to answer, as long as we were considering our response should they ask for one. Although they had other more important things in their lives to be doing, they always considered their time of sharing with their moko their most important and so, mokopuna being the children they were, had better be on task because they all knew their beloved grannies had other more important things to do instead of waiting around for their slow moko to answer a very simple question.

Because.

The grannies demanded precise answers. They didn’t hate. My beloved Grannies almost never hated anything…except, making things up.

Especially their moko making up answers with lots of words that in the end everyone, even the grannies, couldn’t remember the original question, because their little moko had tried to imitate Granny Spider, weaving circles of sticky things that would catch unsuspecting grannies. Instead of having the courage to just say, “Sorry granny, but I don’t know yet, I’m still figuring things out! I’m sure there is a good reason for your question, but at present, for the life of me, I can’t make heads or tails of it. 

Most of the grannies would smile and say, “It’s OK moko, you tell us the answer the way you know it and we’ll just have to learn the way your “eyes” saw what the picture was that we drew for you.

My most-favorite granny is the beautiful, wavy, sandy-haired elderly one, whose hair when loosed from its carved greenstone brooch fell almost to the floor. The one with the emerald green eyes. When I began to stumble in answering a question of hers, she’d always come and sit on the matted floor beside me and say, “Tell me that other story that just came to you when you heard me telling mine moko.”

And something would change inside of me and then I would begin my patere, a rhythmical chant, directed only her. I would answer my granny by telling her in the chant, of the dreams I had had before I even came here and the dreams I was going to have when I’d left. And my granny before long would be weeping tears that just fell every which way because she never realized she was crying and I never realized I was relating what and where I’d been taken to, to experience the realm of wonder that lives and breathes outside of us without our conscious awareness of it being so.

I have learned, that if we are so desiring, unconsciously most times, that within every moment abide teachings and if one is held to the highest degree of neutrality and respectfulness, by one’s own inner self, the floodgates of true insight are opened for discernment.

If one believes enough in what he or she is being shown, irrespective of the incredible strangeness of the landscape one finds oneself in, one has a sense within to believe that you have been taken there to see something so incredibly extraordinary and when the time comes, to have the courage to tell his beloved granny what it was that he was shown, even though it was totally different from the wonder his granny had tried to explain in words.

Wonderment is just that. A realization that each of us can see the same old Tree standing among its peers and come to a place where one no longer has to go visit the forest, but simply “become” it all, by finding that universal space within, wherein, lies the forest of the most ancients.

The living awareness of it, as if we were an empty bottle that has been deliberately placed with such exact exquisiteness beneath and a whisper-of-a-breath behind a waterfall, and whoever has placed this bottle knows that within that entire area of tumultuous, cascading water, in this spot, drips of delicious water droplets fall directly into the open mouth of we the individual – that bottle, without being torn asunder by the ravaging fury of the cascading thunderstorm of water.

That’s why, whoever it was that placed us here knew beforehand that a bottle couldn’t do anything, but stand there in that exact spot without moving, and most importantly not be able to say or express anything.

Mouth agape.

Because it was being infused with an unexplainable ingredient. 

Only then can one’s true standing become understandable when one’s own ordinariness, one’s outward appearance holds no relevancy.  

Only our own experience, our own imaginings, our own innateness of self, can take us to that place, that AHA moment place, where an exceptional external occurrence for example, a song being sung by the most ordinary of singers we know, but didn’t know she had the talent, or maybe never gave her the time – the listening too, maybe, because we knew her we listened with a bias and not the respect that she deserved!

A sunset, or a rainbow however faint, or extremely extraordinary its colors may be, can still move us to tears. Why is that?

Those external “things” are merely instigations of reflections, that draw from within our own beings, our own recognition, deep within our own unrealized construct, a composite beauty that we ourselves are then able to transfer from the “how to do part” to the doing and finally to that place of deep connection and union.

Do they instill within us an unconscious faith, that there are indeed such things as longevity and with that a composite beauty?

In all things that hold for us a Mystery, if one is sufficiently dedicated to the art of investigation and reflection, one can count, in one particular place, the drops flowing off of the roof spouting and pouring over as a rushing stream.

That is how restricted we are and yet how potentially our unrealized excellence is, as has been taught, we each hold within, the highest caliber if we are to believe we are direct descendants of the Gods and Goddesses. That is why we fall in love. It isn’t an ordinary human thing, it is a gift that the Creative Aspect has, not inside itself, BUT IS ITSELF.

If we are part of that creative process, and we are, otherwise how else could we have arrived here, time after time after time? Only, if that thread remains unbroken, we shall continue this pathway forward until we attain our goal of perfection or, in my full understanding, my Granny’s Teachings, Unity – Reunion.

Taken to the extreme, Madness and Sanity, Ugliness, and Beauty in all their degrees, when viewed from a “point-of-view” not from a higher place, but a place of solemn inquiry, as is that space of neutrality to be found midstream. That place that winds Itself through the spaces of opposing currents, carrying within itself an inherent energy, recognized, and understood by all its citizenry. Inside this colossus is where everything, deep secrets and knowledge, percolate, and simmer.

Could this be why the laughter and gaiety of any child will always crack, what would otherwise become of the permafrost and frozen landscape of our adult faces and warm those inner cold spots of an unrelenting heart, to the same magnitude as that ancient Solar Star, placed by some incredible set of circumstances, warm our outer understandings?

RTR