Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Grandma's House



There is so much out there. Or in here, as the case may be. If one was to make a critical analysis of all the possible story lines, movie plots, workout protocols, or musical themes, slice and dice them into a creative blender, one could create a more than delicious concoction. Just add your glass or stainless steel straw and enjoy. That is the ‘out there’ the extrinsic, all the shit happening all the time, swirling around our poor heads like coconuts in a tropical hurricane. The flip side, the yang to the extrinsic yin is everything that we have internalized, all that data in storage inside our cellular central processing units. A quick look at the size of that storage would rival that of IMB, FB and the CIA combined. There is a lot of material there and perhaps, I am offering a suggestion here, just waiting patiently for some outline or structured index with which to jump into action and serve the singular purpose of their being. 

Why else would I keep the smell of my Grandmother’s house in storage for sixty years? To use it in a sentence to help set the stage for a subsequent larger picture? As a slug line in a script to assist with a character’s development (or lack thereof)? To illustrate the sublime olfactory powers we all possess but discard as secondary to sight and sound? Or as an example of the tools of awareness? 

With this delicious and complex reality in mind, it was with a bit of sassiness that I admitted to myself this morning as I sat to write, that my ultimate freedom is in scanning through those files with appreciation and respect in order to screen-grab one or two, mash them together and see what happens. Look at where they lead. Let the guide assume the leadership role and show us what to look at, so they we may see what is appropriate for our understanding and vision in this place and time. There are trends that could have dramatic effect on our growth and understanding. I could (easily) compile a list of my knee-jerk responses to losing. I could go all the way back to my first game in Little League when I began my baseball career by whiffing on three pitches. And my DAD was the pitcher! I remember the failures with a little more intensity than the success’. Please do not ask me why. It was not until I had been selected as MVP on our first State Championship team some forty years after that initial whiff, that it all started to make some sense. At the time of that illumination my first thought was, man did I waste a lot of time feeling unnecessarily sad. 

Call in the path, call it a prerequisite, experience or call it the arc of personal growth, but my responses to those actions are the files I keep in a special file that only I can access. 

And I believe that the time is at hand to access them. 

Certainly the effort would contain a degree of therapeutic transition, the moving from a shadow to brilliant sunlight, but the possibility also equally exists that something of value to others could be an even greater result. Many years ago I was involved with a talented gal who was a hypnotherapist. She asked if I would like to do some past life regression. Always fascinated by this I agreed and off we went, she dangling a gold watch and me getting very, very sleepy. The format was a simple one. She wanted me to go back into the locker room of my college baseball team and have a little chat with the player who was assuming the teams loss as his sole responsibility. The kid was devastated, alone, sad, depressed and angry. That kid was me. She coached me back, opened the gym door and asked if I wanted to go in. Sure. 

I sat there as the grown man of now talking the teen me of then. 

‘I can tell you this, my young friend, that over the course of the next fifty years you will do many incredible things, you will travel the world, achieve great success, love deeply. You will write songs, buy houses and even run Ironman triathlons. You will see things that most people will never see and hear the message of the stars. You will honor your soul and follow the spirit of the cosmos. I know the hurt you feel at this moment in time, but it will pass and the lessons taken from it will ensure your future wisdom, compassion and ability to lead others. These things that you already know are the ones that allow peace in every moment as they pile up one upon the other. Until you become me. Here is the message, this is it: It will be OK. It will all be OK. Relax. You will have to trust me, trust yourself on this of course, but if you see who is talking to you at this very moment of eternity, it will make sense. And it will all be OK.’

I return from forever with the safe and secure smell of Grandma’s house in my heart. 

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