Memento mori – remember you will die
In those final days the number one regret of the dying – “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to my self, not the life others expected of me” – returns us all to the necessity of a living true to one’s self, even in the last moments granted us. Like the outpourings of love in those text messages of passengers about to crash into the Twin Towers.
The sense of ‘I am’ is always with you, only you have attached things to it, I am that – my body; my feelings; my thoughts; my ideas, my possessions etc. All these things, which you use to define you are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not.
There are so many things outside you to avoid knowing your insides, of knowing a life that is true to yourself. So many delights and dark lights to distract you. So much stuff you can pile on top of the seed ‘I am’, to obscure a steady remembrance of your own natural form and flow.
Enjoying the free flow of your own life is a rare gift. We all get stuck identifying with our thoughts and emotions (or ego states). These result from temperament, culture and genetic predispositions, and the necessary adaptations to life experiences. An ego state is a system of feelings accompanied by a related set of behaviours and thought patterns. Like any integrated system, it changes little over time, fearing its dis-integration. When its comfort zone is challenged it resists change with the remembrance of pain. No more so when the safety and security of a primary relationship is threatened by changes in one partner, or changes in one’s circumstances.
From 50 years professional knowledge, and 70 years personal experience I know for sure that it doesn’t matter how much healing, how many workshops, how much tantra, yoga or meditation you do, or even how much couple therapy you do. If you have put away meeting your own stuff it will eventually bite you in both emotional upheavals and psychic numbing.
Projecting it on to or attributing it to your partner, parent or child brings the bite up close, and then you have the push back to deal with. Or you can take the route of a fugitive from your feelings, and meet the number 3 regret of the dying – “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings”.
‘Stuff’ is what makes all of us a little strange to be in relationship with, and usually at the most difficult times in our lives when emotions muddy clear thinking. No matter what relationship we enter we always carry a backpack of powerful self-healing and self-harming resources. It matters when our life is riding us rather than I-am riding my life.
I am offering to open a conversation with your life, and to guide you in building mental and emotional muscle for a self-guided life. This may help you navigate contradictory motivations and longings.