Thursday, August 9, 2012

P is for Perceptions of Reality: Pagan Blog Project

Karmaghna Ulrik posted on Facebook the following question:

Why is it that the flow of wisdom is so often halted by the walls of the emergent self?

I am sure you've all heard the onion analogy. It works as far as it goes. This is especially true if you realize that if you keep pealing back the layers there is nothing in inside and, as Lon Milo DuQuette says, "What is bigger than God? Nothing. And that Nothing is really Something!" While that describes a truth it does not answer Karmaghna's question.

It is my opinion we know who we are as babies. By knowing, I mean we know our souls. My nephew at age four or five watched a show on the History channel with his father. The show as about the Anasazi Indians (the cliff dwellers).

He said that he used to live there. His father told him no that he had always lived with his Mommy and Daddy. "No with my other mommy," came the reply. "I lived with my other mommy there. Then, I got really big. Then, I got really small and have this mommy."

Yeah, we know who we are.

As we go through life we get hurt and damaged. Alternatively, good things happen to us. Each event creates a perspective of reality. The more we buy into that particular reality the 'harder' that view point becomes. So, let us say the first really solid reality-version formed in kindergarten. That one began to define a new, slightly less self-image AND a new slightly more untrue perspective on the outer world. This gets solid then we 'learn' something else and that new perspective is overlayed upon the first one. This pattern repeats. Basically, our outer selves become Mateyoshka dolls. We identify with the outermost shell.

The tricky part is that when we solve the mystery of the outer doll we move inward to the next 'hard reality' but it looks like we are expanding outward. So, the next wall looks further out. Really, the next wall is further in. This illusion is created because each false reality separates us more and more from 'God' and the outer universe even as it separates us from our internal divine soul.

So perhaps the walls are not of our emergent self but of our lifetime specific ego-self.



1 comment:

Lavanah said...

You posted this on Thursday, and here on Monday evening, this was a really well timed read for me. (as was the following one, regarding your father.) Sometimes, the layers of the Mateyoshka dolls look so much like one another that you can't tell that you are working on a different layer. But you are. Because you are different from working on the previous shell.