Snail Guru

My friend, Miss WJB, posted some great quotes about questions in “Shell Searching.” You should check them out. Reminded me of some other questions I’ve been meaning to ask. For now a story as promised.

Back in May I phoned my friend Shawn and said we should hang out. So we did…in a log cabin somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. Before we left he said he wanted to explore how to become his “ideal self.” Funny…I had been thinking about the same thing, only from a different perspective. “Shawn,” I said, “It seems like trying to become my ideal self has got me into lots of bother up to now. I’m not sure I think it’s very good for me.”

So while we were up there we talked a lot about our “ideal selves,” the images we had constructed about what our lives should look like. I realised this had become my “idol self,” something I worshipped and desired to be like. It meant I wasn’t really free to be me…even if I did know what that would look like.

The altitude, it seems, got to me. I decided to make a little wooden puppet of myself, with little arms and legs, all controlled by little strings. Then I was going to burn it. I wanted to demonstrate in some way that I was putting to death my ideal self and the way it had controlled me. Voodoo, I decided, was the way forward!!!!

But just as I had finished making my little Pinocchio-self, I felt really strongly that that wasn’t something I needed to do (funnily enough) – it had already been taken care of. I didn’t need another scapegoat, something to purge me of all my shortcomings.

My ideal self was crucified on a cross. My ideal self was killed and buried. And my ideal self is now hidden with Christ in God. Every terrible thing I think I am, Jesus has taken away. Every good thing I think I should be, Jesus has made available to me.

We’re meant to live in the Great I Am, not the Great I Am Not.

So what happened my little puppet? Well, I threw him in the river and as he was swept away downstream, I was reminded of John O’Donohue’s words, “I would love to live as a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”

This was the beginning of letting go of my ideal self so I can now be free to discover all that God has made me to be. So let’s not confine ourselves to our own constructs and boundaries of who we think we should be. We’re so much more than that.

I want to talk about the Dark Side. I can’t help it, it’s just so inviting: instant gratification, untold power, world domination. Who wouldn’t be tempted?

No one, apparently. Not even Anakin Skywalker.

It’s the usual story: Jedi meets boy, boy learns Jedi moves, boy gets seduced to the Dark Side. Why? He’s pissed that he couldn’t save his Mum of course – thinks he’s wasting his time with all the Jedi rules, would be better doing what he feels like. After all, the Prophecy said he’d be the greatest ever, and what else are prophecies there for other than to give us permission to go make them happen, right? Right?

Maybe not.

And yet it seems we’ve been doing just that ever since the day we acquired a taste for apples. Well who wants to wait to be the greatest ever when you can have it now? I’ll take the apple any day, thank you. And the price – what price? You never said anything about a price.

You see, here’s the deal (maybe): you really are the greatest ever, you just think you can do it on your own. Me too. By thinking such a thing, we’re very much left to do it on our own. Or that’s what we think anyway. The problem with the Dark Side is that it’s…dark. And that’s the price we pay – we lose the ability to see. We lose the Light.

Well thank God for Luke Skywalker, oh I mean, Jesus – thank God for Jesus!! The greatest ever Son of God, Son of Light. He wasn’t seduced to the Dark Side, he didn’t rush to grab it now; he waited, he trusted, he believed that the prophecy would come in its own time. And sure enough it did, though perhaps not as he had expected.

There on the cross, bloodied, bruised, in agony, Jesus lost sight of his Father and was plunged into darkness: “Father, why have you forsaken me?” Did God really walk away, turn his back on Jesus? Or was it just the way Jesus saw it, the way we’ve been seeing it all this time too? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that wasn’t the case?

It’s not!! The Light has come!!

Somehow, and I really don’t know how, whatever Jesus did on the cross means that you never have to do life on your own again…ever. And you never have to try to be the greatest. With God you already are. There’s no one like you. Just open your eyes, see the Light.

“Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and mistrust, your body is a dank cellar. Keep your eyes open so you don’t get musty and murky.” Jesus (Luke 11:34-36, The Message)

So my Dad, bless his heart, trailed through YouTube. Thanks Dad!!

I was a bit of a perfectionist when I was a boy, especially when it came to making things. Man, I’d get so upset at the slightest smudge on a picture or a misplaced blob of glue on a model airplane. Dad, in his attempts to console me, would just rub my head and remind me, “Son, a man on a galloping snail wouldn’t notice it.” Thanks Dad – such wise colloquialisms have stayed with me ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper!

I have questions though: how fast does a galloping snail actually go? They might be super quick for all I know. And is the man just really really small or is the snail like massive? Because these things, I’m sure, would affect the extent to which he’d notice the smudges and blobs.

I must ask my Dad.

You see, I think it must be all about what we’re looking for and if we’re even able to give it a name. The American novelist Mary McCarthy once wrote, “There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.” We perceive things but do we actually notice them or recognize them? I guess we don’t know what we don’t know. On the other hand, we sometimes don’t know what we do know. And what happens when we don’t know that we do know what we don’t know we know?!!

Let’s take God, for example. God is Love. Is Love God? If you know Love, do you know God, even if you don’t know it is God? I don’t know…but I’m curious to find out!

Saintly Paul has a thing or two to say about this in his letter to the Romans, stuff about knowing God but not really treating him like God. Life, he suggests, tends to get a bit messy as a result. Knowing God, it seems, helps us get to know ourselves. Loving God helps us to love ourselves too. Wouldn’t that be nice?! 

I’m going to try to notice God a bit more, try to recognise him a little better, to slow down and take the time to really look for these truths that I’ve always perceived but never really noticed. Like when I look at a tree I see how wonderful God is to have made it and that he thinks I’m more valuable than the birds that nest in it and more beautiful than the flowers that grow around it. As Mary McCarthy goes on to say, “A truth is something that everyone can be shown to know and to have known, as people say, all along.” I guess we just need a little reminder every so often.

Maybe as I slow down I’ll begin to notice a few smudges or misplaced blobs. And maybe I’ll begin to love them too.

(Still, I’d be pretty keen to know what the man on the galloping snail has to say about it all? Any ideas?)

I was chatting through my journey with a friend a few weeks ago, telling him how I thought I was progressing. “So I’m getting there,” I remarked in closing. As I was walking away I made a little mental correction: “No, I’m getting here.”

The last few months have brought some pretty big changes, culminating in my desire to be present, to be all of myself here and now.

Richard Moss so eloquently describes this in the “Mandala of Being.” He proposes that we circumnavigate around being present, being in the Now, by being pulled away by various stories that prevent us from accessing who we really are: grandiose or depressive Me stories, angry or jealous You stories, regretful or fearful stories about the Past or the Future.

All this centres on who we are. And who are we anyway? Am I a teacher, doctor, lawyer? Am I a musician, an athlete, an artist? A son, brother, or father? Am I a Christian, Buddhist, or Muslim? Or am I so much more? Am I just…I am? I once voiced this to someone who advised me to think of the implications of such a statement – it’s been known to get people crucified! So I have…I’m still in the question, (which is a handy way to avoid crucifixion for the time being!).

Dr Moss writes, “As long as we are inhabiting an identity, we do not consciously have the capacity to engage each moment afresh. We are capable only of interpreting each moment in terms of whether it supports or threatens our identities … Thus we tend to live our lives in a state of nearly perpetual reaction and self-protection.”

What would it look like to live as sons and daughters of God, to hold within us the great I AM? Would we no longer live having to be reactive and self-protective, but instead be proactive and reach out? Jesus was, I believe, the greatest example and advocate of this. In his famous speech on the hill he invited us to give our “attention to what God is doing right now and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.” The same could be said of what happened yesterday.

So what are our stories that pull us away from Now? What are the identities that limit us in our being? Am I ugly, inadequate, ignored? Am I afraid because I always seem to get disappointed? Will I just stay quiet because that’s what good boys are supposed to do? Or will I rise above my history, my fears, my ideals and become the “so much more” that I am? As Einstein said, you cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it. Perhaps we could all do with telling ourselves some different stories as we journey here, stories more fitting of sons and daughters of I AM.

It’s official – we’ve been looking in the wrong place. The poet Muriel Rukeyser has declared, “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Someone should go tell those clever scientists over in Switzerland the structure of the universe is not to be found chasing atoms round 17-mile underground tunnels, but sitting round dinner tables, bar stools and campfires. The structure of the universe is to be found in stories.

Gregory Bateson tells the parable of the man who asked his computer if it would ever think like a human being. The computer clunked and clicked, then finally printed out its answer, as computers do. The man ran excitedly to read the revelation. There neatly typed were the words: NOW THAT REMINDS ME OF A STORY.

Our perspective of the world, our view of reality is made only of the stories we tell ourselves. There is no other way. There is no objective reality (not from our perspective anyway). We experience something, filter it, store it, then keep retelling it as a story in our heads. That is where our reality lies.

So what stories are we telling ourselves? Which ones are helpful, which ones are not? Maybe I’ve got a few stories of my own to tell. First I will gladly say that, in my experience, stories can be changed. The ending doesn’t always have to play out the same way. The beautiful thing about our brains, as distinct from computers, it that the same cells that hold memory, hold imagination. We get to play around with our stories. Sometimes we make them horror stories, or tragedies, worse than they really are. Wouldn’t it be nice to believe that they could turn into adventure stories or fairy-tales; that there really were such things as happily-ever-afters?

Maybe life would become much more enjoyable, much more meaningful. Maybe we could be the heroes and lovers, wizards and kings we’ve always believed we were. Maybe…

I’m back.

Sorry to have been away for a while. I’ve been off exploring the garden, doing a little “shell searching.” I’m pleased to say that I didn’t find the right answers; just better questions to ask. 

I have to admit, the reason I stopped writing was that it became apparent (to me anyway) that I was preaching. Yes, I had a bit of an agenda. I think I thought I was right and that became uncomfortably uncomfortable. It was time for a rest.

So I’m sorry for thinking I had the right answers. I promise not to think that anymore. I promise to look for the right questions, if “right” can be defined as loving, inspiring, cultivating.

It’s nice to be back.