Moving On: Stream of Consciousness

Recently I had someone attempt to rattle my spiritual infrastructure by trying to remind me that no matter what I do, feel or believe today, whoever I was in the past, is equally a part of myself. That apathy, degradation and the ability to be destructive towards myself or others was the rotten core of a spiritual house of cards... to which the medicine in my heart let out a soft, compassionate laugh. Still I felt compelled to get these thoughts out...

Are we a structure - built upon the foundation of our childhoods? Do
we add layers of brick and mortar experience, gain details in our
personal architecture throughout life? Is it fact that were are no
more then to totality of our experiences and actions?

Personally, I feel more like a stream, at times a river, a torrent or
a waterfall. At times destructive, at times gentle and revitalizing.
What form I take, seems linked to my environment as well as my own
consciousness. It doesn't feel like somewhere, underneath how I feel
today, is the seedy layer of self, riddled with flaws and past
mistakes, on which this new portion must be built. It doesn't feel
like the past corrupts the integrity of the new construction. Of who
we want to be today.

Perhaps the idea of being a fluid stream is convenient because it
seems like it can alleviate our responsibility for our actions and
choices. But I don't feel that way either. I think that you have to
understand your essence and then honestly evaluate the behavioral and
personality layers that we all don to integrate into the...
mainstream. I understand my essence, I understand my underlying
capacity for good and love in the world. To look back at the flow of
my stream I realize - here my water was very murky, here it became
toxic and there it rushed through the canyons of life with destructive
force. I realize at points the stream became a trickle and maybe got
dammed up.

I do think that life as a stream offers freedom. Freedom to break what
we perceive as cycles in ourselves. We navigate life in western
culture as a series of efforts in crowding out distractions and deterrents.

I carry with me the memory of all the places my stream has gone. Some
of them pure, authentic and uncanny. Others were dark, defeated and
still inexcusable. The problem is that the stream, when toxic, when it
makes a choice to let itself flow in the wrong direction, it has the
power to erode and harm those who live or swim in it. Understanding
that at whatever point which I flowed, as a version of myself not at
its purest, doesn't erase the damage it may have caused.

What the kindness of strangers represents, whether in ceremony or on
the streets of the city, is an kind acceptance of the impure and even
toxic. To be kind and respectful to a person on the street, doesn't
occur from speculation, projecting or judging them. The person you
gave kindness to likely is going to be an asshole at some point. But
that isn't your concern. I think our job is just to let it flow out of
us regardless of whom we give it to. Hopefully our intent and action
have some effect that may manifest for this otherwise, gruff, possibly
shitty person.

In ceremony, in life - people who don't know the terrible things
you've done represent hope and the timeless innocence of our true
essence. Personality is a language that we wear to communicate in
translatable terms.

Many people don't take responsibility for where and how they flow.
They underplay the power of intention to steer the course and the
necessity of discipline to maintain it. I lament my personal
degradation because even without the proper context to interpret it, I
got the message years ago and allowed myself to falter and forget that
message. But like Neal Glodsmith reiterates so effectively, failure isn't real, it is a step towards the goal of success, like a child learning to walk... it
goes... fall, fall, fall... walk.

I hope I am done flowing through the part of my life where I bent to anger,
self loathing and hopelessness. Survival of the fittest, doesn't mean
the strongest or smartest, it means the most adaptive. As I open my
mind to the potential of myself, my emotions naturally stir as I think
of the possible application of such adaptive transformations to other
people I know in my life.