Remembering our natural selves
Deepak Chopra writes:
Among the many positive things about human evolution, there is a huge negative: We are the only life forms that can put up resistance. By resisting the flow of life, we become conflicted, confused, defensive, and self-defeating.
David Whyte says:
“I suddenly realised that one of the core competencies of being human was that we were the only corner of creation that could refuse to be ourselves.
The King Fisher doesn’t get to choose to be a crow. And the mountain is just a mountain, and the cloud is just a cloud. The tree is just a tree.
That’s why the natural world seems to be so nourishing to us; we get an intonation of what it might be like just to be ourselves.
But as human beings, we have this extraordinary ability not only not to be ourselves but to pretend to be someone else and to hang a mask in front of our real identity. We can even take a further virtuosic step and forget that we’re hanging a mask in front of our face, which you remember to begin with the first few times you did it.
Suddenly, you’ve become the mask, and you’re actually practising that identity as a beautiful form of defence against the world. “
- Where am I in resistance to the flow of life?
- How much of my reality (and stuckness) is shaped by my resistance and refusal to be myself?
- How do I remember my “kingfisher self”?
These are questions that can be transformational if you allow it.
