Amongst a few species of mammals there is a capacity to
navigate by way of merely hearing, not seeing. Its called echolocation and it allows bats
and whales to determine where they are and navigate a course by sending out
sounds into their surrounds and determining where they are from the echo that
comes back to them. This permits them to know where they are and continue to
move forward assuredly even in complete darkness.
There is a parallel, metaphorically, to the way I find
myself and navigate my way through life. When I rely only on my physical senses
and surface awareness to determine my sense of self and where I want to go I am
using ego-location. I have
thoughts about myself that are based on my physical attributes, my roles, my relationships,
the expectations that go with these representations of me. The reverberations
of these thoughts inform my sense of self. I am a father, or a teacher, or
counselor, or husband, or a trusted friend, a citizen, or neighbor. Nothing wrong
with ego-location in navigating our world except when it obviates a deeper
inquiry and realization of our true self.
Sometimes life will hand us circumstances that strip us of
one of these “representations” of self or we can by design choose to decommission
ourselves for a time from the roles we play. In either case we are given a
perfect opportunity to reacquaint our sense of self using a “God positioning
system” – intentionally seeking an internal locus of self-awareness that did
not originate in the world nor derive its value from our actions or accomplishments.
This is what I am seeking during this hiatus from pulpit ministry.
Thus far my time has been one of releasing the tension bound
up in expectations as I extricate myself temporarily from the public image of
my current process and allow myself to be radically honest and vulnerable and
open to who I think I am, and, more vitally, open and receptive to the truth of
my Being. There is a time for egolocation and there is a time to a turn a deaf ear to its assessment that would only get you lost again. It is, after all, the reverberations of Love that give us the singular true sense of what we are and position us most precisely in a state of peace and well-being. May it be so.
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where the winds of change cannot disturb the equanimity, changeless nature within us. I come to this place to find this place within me, and bring back the photo as precious memory of my time here and as a symbol of the timeless truth in my deeper self.
