PS Gaia is your Mother Part 3 

Self - Centered?

Almost everyone I know (myself included) is quite

asonishingly self-centered. Even parents, who as a

breed generally have to surrender themselves

whether they like it or not, exhibit all the signs

of Turn of the Millenium self-obsession .

Are we flawed - this generation under threat of

extinction?  Just as we reach the point of no

return, ecologically speaking, we find ourselves

as a race with our noses buried in our navels

attempting not to be Women who Love Too Much or

Men Without a Wild Side. Flawed? Well considering

the overall oxygen reduction, ozone depletion and

the cover of Time magazine usually, we could be

forgiven for having our priorities a little

confused. It's ourselves we have to forgive. For

being the most destructive species in the known

history of the planet. The old snake swallowing

its tail conundrum.

Perhaps we are actually well-primed computer

chips, who, having noticed the effects of our

current consciousness upon our habitat, are

intelligent enough to correct the program before

trying to deal with all the mistakes made

previously. Could self-centering be the most

efficient evolutionary adaptation for our kind?

Of couse here and there one meets a person who is

completely present. Who doesn't need to be

self-centered because they are totally centered.

This person can see. This person can listen. This

person can love without loss of sovereignty. It

feels very good to be around this person, although

in the face of all that centeredness many of us

slow learners can tend to become unravelled.

Suddenly all our trivial attempts at enlightenment

show fluorescent beside a light source as natural

as the sun.

I guess the difference is...are we centered around

the outside of ourselves - polishing up our

personalities where we will always need light to

shine on us, or are we radiating our own light

from within us?

Well the latter sure sounds better but how does

one do that?

I once learned from a guru who used to refer to

the light 'within inside' of us. I thought it was

a quaint oversight as English is not his mother

tongue. Then time looking 'within' showed me the

apalling maelstrom of beliefs, fears, inanity and

creativity that was filling up my inner space. Ah.

Somewhere beyond that labyrinth, if you get past

the disneyland trivia and the desire sectors, you

may come upon dragons and griffins with slathering

jaws. In my ashram days that frequently seemed

like a good time to go and have some breakfast,

but I learned from watching the Never Ending Story

that this is actually really close to where the

good stuff lies.

The good stuff exists beyond the reach of words,

so I will leave that for you to discover - if you

have the courage. Such a soap opera exists between

the inbreath and the outbreath of an untamed mind.

Castaneda called it internal dialogue. Personally

I think he was lucky to have anything so polite

going on inside his head. Having meditated with

varying degrees of intensity since I was around

eight years old, I must say that the maelstrom

appears to always be there. I have travelled the

road from chaos to stillness and back more than

once. And knowing as I do the savage wilderness of

my own mind, I am not at all surprised that we

humans are so troublesome on planet Earth. In

fact, if the tantric texts are to be trusted, this

might be the ideal time for the snake to swallow

its own tail and suck itself soothingly into

submission for a few centuries.

"But don't you just stay there in bliss once you

acheive such a state?" ask the unitiated, "Why go

back to chaos?" Well, I can never quite pinpoint

the moment when it occurs. One minute the universe

makes perfect exquisite sense... and the next

minute it doesn't. A doorway slowly closes and one

finds oneself on the outside. No key, a distantly

remembered map and  sense that one has died and

been reborn and there is no choice but to continue

on. After all didn't we come here to help reset a

flawed computer program? Perhaps the repair job is

an ongoing process. Breath by breath. Life by

life, slowly bringing the collective unconscious

to a groaning halt, and then allow that

unfathomable stillness to take over.

"Brainwashing", an old Mahatma used to call it

gleefully, "and those brains - so badly do they

need to be washed!"

So I shall accept my self-centered nature. And

yours. But I shall remind us both: within us is

heaven, within us is hell, and within inside of

that is....something more. Be still and know that

I Am ... Goddess ....And You...?

P.S. Gaia asked me to mention that if the human

race or a good majority of it, were to take a deep

breath together - which she says should be

technologically less complicated than an Olympic

games coverage - that the event would forever

radically change everything in a very cool way. So

if you (yes you - O slumbering hero) happen to

know anyone who could set such a feat in motion

then go ahead and change history, herstory

ourstory...this story needs a satisfying future.