Was a time long ago, when memories were still fresh and large rivers were likened to Passenger Trains, and the smaller waterways and every tributary feeding the river were called Modules that fed the Passenger Train with her passengers.
In the midstream of the river, there is usually a calm place that holds sway. At the same time and in that configuration, peril lurks for the unwary, for in this calm place, she wears a distinct uniform, an almost undiscernible ripple atop that runs for a time, then disappears, and reappears before disappearing and reappearing someplace else. To the knowledgeable, this always calls for attention and respect. Parents who have been raised in the vicinity of the river, worried about their youngsters, warn them about this danger.
Our beloved elders likened her to the engineer of the passenger train, which is fully loaded with a host of different types and with her assorted tool kit of a torch and spannery things and a tube of magic, ever-ready lubricating oil at the ready poking out of her cover-all pocket to oil those noisy, keep-one-awake-squeaky-things. On duty 24/7. Her sole duty was/is to ensure the mechanics or the services of the train were performing accordingly so that every different, unique need of each passenger was taken care of, and that each free-to-go customer felt safe and secure, knowing that each one of them had been trained from an early age to be careful of who they spoke with and especially watch for those particular ones who would snatch them or their, accidentally, left-on-their-own-momentarily, innocent kiddies of all sizes, shapes, and forms.
This train was considered to be far ahead of the times because its designer had developed a system whereby it was in constant motion, it never had to stop. Across the land, passengers boarded satellite commuters, that, at strategically placed stations/intersections, ran into and were fully “merged into the Passenger Train. This train stopped once, at one station, for all its passengers to disembark because it was the only terminal available with the capacity to handle such a myriad of needs 24/7, Mother Ocean. But the interesting thing about the scientific innovation that was built into the system was that this same train had already begun another run moments after starting off – fully loaded as well. 24/7 365 days a year since before counting days had begun. In fact, even before then!
The Designer had decided that this type of modeling would not only be the most cost-effective for all concerned but because of the savings and the ramifications such a model would have on the environment. Most impressive of all, passengers with all their variations of needs would still be able to travel for free as well as be able to enjoy the free 24-hour smorgasbord at their leisure and know that at any time, if they forgot, for even a millisecond, they themselves would become part of the incredible menu.
This natural system of transportation worked successfully for millennia until a despot arrived and spoke in a loud voice so everyone who was anyone could hear. From this day forward a new management structure would be installed from the no-bodies and no-ones, which would install a new model called Productivity and Profits.
The locals who had ridden the train forever, it seemed, were impressed with the language being used, “Maybe that is truly who I am, and to prove it, I should go it alone too, and become as successful as they say I could. they each whispered to themselves. “Maybe, I would be more capable of doing that Engineer’s job more quickly and thoroughly than she ever could!”
And the mumbling and grumbling began as some of these folks for the very first time recognized how better and quicker, they alone, could indeed do it all by themselves and actually charge a small fee, just to cover admin costs and have a little bit left over to cover their enormous amount of voluntary work. Well, honestly, it wasn’t everyone, because, no matter where you go, there are still those enlightened ones who don’t think about anything at all and just keep unhappily plodding on until they strike the lottery.
Hmmmm, unease doesn’t just reside in shouted protest. like a current, anger can also reside in a quiet space, but in some models, there is hidden seething and percolations smoldering. All the while it metastasizes, gathering its justification, sculpting its damning form.
And so the units of the river began separating and competing against each other and before long the river began to die – not the river itself – its components, not realizing in their newfound freedom, they were, only as a whole, that which they became to despise because an unknown voice had told them that singularly, they would be more viable than what had always been before, as a whole.
We do something of goodwill, without holding an attachment or even an expectation of a predetermined outcome. Not that expected outcomes should ever be the goal, for, they should always be. But our intent of lending a hand of goodwill should be always that and only that. Our intent is always the goal irrespective of the outcome, for the outcome rightfully belongs in other places. Effort alone doesn’t always produce expected outcomes.
What is being considered is the degree of one’s own expectation and to where, or whose neck/s and shoulders, the garland of kudos should always be strewn around.
Whenever we do something, irrespective of the circumstance is it not natural to expect an outcome back, for the effort expended? Tit for Tat?
When the preordained expectation is met or obtained we should always feel ratified and even satisfied. Our status as Hero or She’ro has been affirmed. 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-Pres. Obama maybe? That would be grand for sure! But what came first, the Expectation or the Effort?
My Grannies always asked us these questions and never waited around for your answer if you had to think about one. They had other more pressing things to be doing instead of waiting around for their slow moko to answer a very simple question.
Because.
They demanded precise answers. They didn’t hate. My beloved Grannies 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!
All 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 mind saw what the picture was that we shared with you.
They liked answers like that, in fact, to make sure you weren’t imitating Granny spider, in a more “silken” way which we’d think they had never come across before, they’d wait a bit and come back again and you’d better have that “figuring out all figured out” otherwise one poor kid was washing and drying dishes all by his “figuring out” lonely self.
But my most-favorite granny, the beautiful, wavy, sandy-haired elderly one, whose hair when loosened from its carved greenstone (pounamu) brooch fell almost to the floor. The one with the emerald green eyes. When I began to answer a question of hers, she’d always come and sit on the matted floor beside me and whisper, “Tell me that other story that just came to you when you heard me telling mine moko. Your story”
And so I would.
Whispering to only her, I would answer my granny by telling her of the dreams that came to me even before I came here and the dreams I was going to have when I 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 inside 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 predetermined landscape that one finds oneself in, one has been taken there to see something 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 exact preciseness under a waterfall, and whoever has placed this bottle knows that, in this spot, drips of exquisite water droplets fall directly into the open mouth of, we that individual – the bottle.
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 move us to tears. Those external “things” are merely instigations of reflections, that draw from within our own “beings,” OUR OWN TWIN, deep within our own unrealized construct, a composite beauty that we ourselves are then able to transfer from the “Unknowing to the Knowing” and finally to that place of deep understanding.
In all things that hold for us a Mystery, “that aspect” then becomes a decipherable, colored story to be shared, and the medicinal part of it extracted from its Natural deposit with no subsequent effects on the receiver or the donor and neither our surroundings.
Indigenous Medicine, the infusion through storytelling part of it.
That is how restricted we are and yet how potentially our unrealized excellence is, as has been taught, we each hold within each of us, 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.
We all wait latent, in that State of potentiality
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 of my Granny’s Teachings, Unity.
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 all the deep secrets and knowledge percolate and simmer.
Could this be why the laughter and tireless gaiety of our children always warms those inner cold spots of each of our own rivers? As does that ancient Solar Star, placed by a set of incredible circumstances in the entirety of it all. It can always bring a sense of relief and a tender warmth and clarity to our uncertainties, when and if, given the time, the space, and the respect – that such a sacred place deserves.
RTR