Early this morning a new awareness arose in me as follows, in Dutch: ‘Luister naar jezelf, breng het woord des Heren’. Translated this is: “Listen to yourself, bring the word of the Lord”. These words, an admonition almost, were accompanied by a sense of awareness about my mother, not so much that she would be there, but rather that this was and is the type of thing she would say to me, along with that feeling of conviction. This describes the recalling feelings and values associated with memories about my Mother, from my childhood. The important thing is that these were the ones that were associated and not some other possible values and memories.
Before going back to sleep some more, I repeated the words quite a few times, so that I would remember them. Along with this rehearsal process, the meaning of the sentence emerged as follows. The ideas I am working on right now and am now discovering, should be made known because they are worth while. The fact that my Mother would be associated with this awareness stems from my recall about her as being supportive of my abilities; my Father had his doubts and was more critical as I recall.
Now on my coffee contemplation while waiting for the cereal to cook, I recall the above reported nightly episode and I think: ‘You know what, one of my early childhood notions was to become an Apostle’. I think I must have heard a sermon about this and have been impressed by the guy upfront.
As that may have been, all this ‘apostleship’ notion came up again in the summer of 1995, the last time I talked to and saw my parents alive in the body. My Mother had some dementia, but it was intermittent. In our discussion about my plans at the time, I must have said some thing about ‘wanting to be an apostle as a child’ and without delay her reply was ‘It is not too late’! That took me a bit by surprise and there the matter remained.
The following year I was back in Holland twice for the funeral of Dad in February and my Mom’s in June. The apostleship notion laid low until about 2006, when I had my talk ‘In Search of the Sacred’. But, this notion stayed a notion perceived, much the way you do of objects displayed for sale, but you are not buying.
This has now changed for me and a feeling of urgency almost has emerged with respect to ‘gettingincludes profane and is not kept outside and away. So, the profane expression of ‘getting the word out’ is as valid as the saying ‘proclaim the word of the lord’ in some other tradition. The holy, the profane, the sacred, the mundane and all experience is contained in Existence Divine. Hence the change from ‘the colloquial’ to ‘the profane‘, and this is ‘putting my money where my mouth’, as another expression puts it, as an application of the necessity to include all that which entails our human experience and not just some of it.
We must make distinctions, but not exclude, because exclusions lead to repressions, which return as intrusions, causing interruptions and possibly conflicts.
In order to cope with the diversity of our human experience, it is better advice to deal with what is difficult, rather than to ignore the unwanted, which always remains as such. And so does that what has been resolved, for that matter.
On the other hand, we must also recognise that relations and situations shift with time, because it takes time to learn, gain insight, shift position and adopt new perspectives. But, with time some things get worse, not better and this is what we need to watch out for, ensuring that time is on our side and not working against us.
<10:12am~
