Tweaking My Source Code
As a child, a half-century ago, unfiltered, non-supportive messages entered my being. As an adult, I consciously choose the messages to believe, those to change and find those message meant for someone else.
In 1966, William Shatner’s opening monologue in the original Star Trek series started a global shift in human awareness, well, in my awareness anyway, when he spoke those famous words: “Where no man has gone before.”
The courage it took to fake travel through the universe at warp 7, is diametrically homologous to living in a socially sanctioned fake life, or, embarking upon the real journey, where classical mechanics guessing meets quantum mechanical possibilities. In the quantum universe within us, the following applies: “I am here and there, where have I left to go?”
Innumerable times, in search of Self, I overlooked myself. Each quest delivered me to the threshold of my imperfect being and here is where I fought my demons. Each time believing I had discovered the answer, or, so I thought, then I recognized, again, those familiar faces among many, I knew their names, Discomfort, Dis-ease, and Dissatisfaction
Imperfection is the light of my soul bent into the world. There is no running away from of my reflection; I need to first embrace that which I refuse to accept, to know visceral those images which swarm around me in the guise of others. All attempts to avoid, ignore or disregard knowing the fullness of me leads me down the path of knowing less of everything else.
In my youth, I entered into my first battle with a host of imagined demons after a haunting dream. The dream was of a stairway leading to the bedroom and to a child lying in bed awake and terrified. Terrified by the sounds of giant lobster pincers slowing raking across water-soaked stair treads and step-by-step toward the room in which I lay. The lobsters entered the room and gathered under the bed. If I tried to get up, a claw would grab my foot and the lobsters devour me.
I awoke from this dream having to pee but in that space between waking and dreaming, I did not know reality from illusion. I had to get up but I did not run for the door, instead, I stood my ground defiantly. The room was black and I without a weapon challenged all forms of dark entities to fight. My feet were vulnerable and I winced expecting pain. The seconds slowly passed as shapes emerged all around me.
There, waist-high and in front of me, the dresser. There to my left and taller than me, the window sill. And above my head, the angled ceiling, but these shapes were not advancing; In those first few defiant seconds, my eyes had adjusted and I had survived the onslaught and confronted my fear of the dark.
This was my first initiation into the inescapable truths and my prime directive — Above all else, know thyself.
