A 3 a.m. Nugget of Truth

The thought came that because both my parents and I are Pisces, we were as one big pool of water, and to become my own person, I’ve had to fight to separate myself from them. Then immediately the thought continued to say, that’s not true, that’s just an intellectual arrangement and conclusion from what you’ve been fed as ‘facts’. And I could see what it meant then, that I had taken what I knew about Pisces, that we are without boundary, and extrapolated a romantic picture about my relationship with my parents from it. I know I do this quite effortlessly, and often, and all the other times I had done this I went along with these rationalized constructs not only willingly, but smugly, as if they are proof of my mental powess (discreetly of course, wouldn’t want to be blatantly arrogant, would we?)

What kicked me in the gut though, is how often I’ve done this, this reconstruction of notions I have, into a picture to my liking, because I know that it is falsehood. Is this what they mean by ‘building castles in the air’ (with bits of floating material like ideas and concepts), or the ability of the Enneatype 7 in reframing? I think I might be about to construct again… There seems to only be the threadiest hairline between this being a blessing and a curse… We’ll focus on the curse for the moment…

So, if these are stories I made up to tell myself, then I did it for reasons that weren’t immediately apparent but were meant to protect my ego from the pain of knowing the truth. What were the reasons and what were the truths? I’ve a feeling that I ought to begin with the tiny kernel of truth that is within the lie it is wrapped in. Looking at what came up in the night as an example, I could say honestly (perhaps clarity is a better tool of assessment) that what’s true is that I felt I had to fight to get away from my parents, to be my own person. This is a typical part of individuation, common in teenage years, but I’ve taken the fight much further in my own life, largely because my ego was nurtured and accelerated into development—precocity—so early on, with the brain-candy belief of achievement leading to reward, that the desire for individuality came very early and strong. My ego was raging and overgrown for my age, but being emotionally naïve, it knew no bounds. Or at least it liked to believe that. I think that’s why I’ve always believed, with a fervor atypical of me, that sky’s the limit. Sky’s not the limit, more like. I see now why that’s called inflation.

So the painful truth my ego wanted to be protected from was that I actually wanted to be separated and distinct from my parents (and any collective which threatens to swallow me up) not because of an accident (or synchronicity) of birth, such as our birth signs, but because my ego wanted its own space, to expand, to inflate. That’s the ugly little kernel of truth in the middle.

I wanted to end this ‘investigation’ here, but for some reason the image of the fox came unbidden, reminding me of the first time I experienced a ‘journey’ through guided meditation, the fox was the animal that appeared, waiting for me at the entrance into the dark wood. Was she a personification of my ego, the stealthy, subversive, and clever one? Yes. Hmmm. I recall now the house I came upon in the woods, a cozy looking cottage with a light on but no one home. The instructor who led the meditation told me that the fox was about sour grapes (drawing on Aesop’s fable), which did not feel right to me, and smirked at there being no one home in my house (I see now that he was not much more mature than I was, though our egos were always competing for whose was bigger). I think now that that house was where and what I long to be, what I am journeying toward in this life. A warm and glowing sense of belonging and haven of rest, silence and solitude, and that ultimate surrendering of the self, the ego, so there is ‘no one home’, because the Self is, by that point and in that place, more than a being who lives in the house, more than the house, more than the woods even. It is all of that and more. I will know what it’s like when I get there ☺

What I remember vividly too is the quiet gaze of the fox, as she sat perfectly composed, patiently waiting for me. She is also the discerning, assertive, quick-silver mind, capable of synthesizing details and relevances into a cohesive whole. She is ego in its totality, necessary to growth.

I have a flash of the ego being a car, getting us from one place to the next on our life’s journey. I suppose then, once we reach enlightenment, or heaven, or oneness, wherever that destination is, we would have no need of a vehicle, our ego, and it will simply cease to exist, because it will no longer have meaning. But for now, I shall keep in mind that my car is my ego, for better or worse, as I often dream about driving in a car.

Thinking about that time in my life I remember too the great rush of freedom and exhilaration I was in the thralls of most of the time. It was shortly after my separation and a whole new life had begun for me. I was the fish in a bowl put back into the ocean, a bird taking its first flight out of captivity, finally living and loving it, awkwardness and all. Life was moving at a speed previously unknown to me, and I wanted to go even faster (manifesting in a wad of traffic tickets and a car accident). And yes, I was inflating faster and bigger than a hot-air balloon on steroids… Ahhh, the ride continues…