I’M NOT WHO I THINK I AM YET
9/23/07
Everyone knows they are someone , but few ever know who that someone really is. Great masters have achieved self understanding , though self abandonment. Self abandonment is the casting off of all non essential earthly influences, to achieve the understanding of our core selves. Self abandonment is the most difficult state for the human mind to achieve.
I have had many visions of myself over my many years of conscious, earthly, existence. When I was a child I dreamt of being a cowboy, a warrior, a teacher, an adult, a singer , a dancer, and artist, an actor, a writer, a musician, an orchestra director, a vantriloquist and a race car driver. I am certain I’ve forgotten many more childhood visions of myself. Some of these visions lasted into my adulthood, others faded away as quickly as they came.
Being imaginative I have always had visions of one thing or another, that I might want to do or be. When I concentrate hard enough on a vision I will gather information and experiences to better define my goal. Occasionally I am forced to realize that the efforts of becoming something I have invisioned,are either beyond my talents or physical abilities to achieve. I then revise my goals, or abandon any further attempts at achieving them,and move on to another better suited to my abilities and truest interest.
Everyone does this to a certain extent. Few however go far enough in their honest commitment to self abandonment to persue lofty goals. Many of us are persuaded at a young age;that we are not smart enough or fast enough, or good looking enough to be more than we are, or more than our parents are. “You are average,” was a statement I heard time and again from every adult I’d ever encountered as a child. I knew I was not average, because I refused to accept the definition of average, as it related to my ambitions and ideas. I knew what I thought was different than most people. What I read, what I watched, the music I listened to were all different than most of the people around me. I was considered an outspoken student, in every school I attended . I always remained quiet in a classroom or social settings; until I was called upon to answer a question, or give my opinion on something. I often answered questions with questions. This frustrated my teachers and my parents, however I would persist with asking questions; until I got the answers I needed to satisfy me. I could never accept what I was told on face value. Too much didn’t make sense to me. Simple things and complex issues were never explained to my satisfaction. Like why couldn’t I go outside and play? Why couldn’t I have more ice cream.? Why does God live in Heaven? Where is Heaven? Where is Hell ? Why do I have to learn Algebra? Why did George Washington cut down a cherry tree? Why did I have to take a round piece of bread in my mouth and kneel at an altar? Why did I have to tell all my sins to someone I didn’t know? What are sins? Why are they sins? Who said they were sins? Why did I have to listen to stuff I didn’t have any interest in? Why did I have to spend time running around a gym fifty times, when I got tired after running around a gym ten times? Why did I have to listen to someone yell at me; because I was too slow, or too fast, or I asked too many questions? I gave up listening to people who didn’t make any sense, and focused on only those who did make sense to me. Everyone wanted to tell me I couldn’t do something I wanted to do, or that certain things couldn’t be done. What was the sense of listening to them? It was like trying make sense of what G.W Bush is talking about, in any of his press conferences or speeches.
Knowing myself was perhaps the most difficult task I encountered as I grew up. It was my most pressing issue. I was an avid reader of history. I majored in History in college. Reading about great people and their accomplishments encouraged me to seek great ideas, and look at the world, and my own reality from a different perspective. I was most encouraged as a teenager, when I discovered in a biography about Albert Einstein; that his parents and early teachers thought he was extremely slow, and possibly mentally retarded. As it turned out Einstein was a consumate day dreamer, and his school classes bored him so badly he would ignore his teachers. At the age of 28 he had developed his Theory of Relativity, and was exalted by the world’s academic community, as one of the greatest thinkers and physicists in the world.
If Einstein had paid any attention to those who called him slow or retarded, he would have never become who he became. I understood after reading this biography; that if I paid attention to what other people said about me, I would never achieve anything more than they expected of me, which was very little ; other than to be quiet, stand up, sit down, eat, drink, sleep and go to school, do my homework, take out the garbage, etc.etc. etc.
Mastering self abandonment is difficult only because the reality we grow up in is designed to diminish greatness in individuals. Conformity is the high goal of most societies. Only those who can invision their reality beyond the clouds of the controlled confusion of authority will ever break out of the mundane existences predetermined for us. Self abandonment means to abandon all that is holding us back from achieving the highest goals we can imagine. Self abandonment is the ascension of ourselves to a higher consciousness, void of all criticism, controls, or mindless restrictions , designed and enforced by mindless people and their mindless institutions. Self abandonment frees the individual to become anything one desires to be, and everything one was meant to be. It allows everyone to manifest their greatest ambitions, through the discovery of their truest selves.
L.A. STEEL
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