Nomad, Chameleon or Pilgrim
Feb. 13th, 2011 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cedar_groveFrom The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
I understand these things so well, because I violate them so often. Yet I, as you, consider myself a pilgrim of the deepest kind, journeying beyond any one creed or tradition, into the compelling, recurring space in which we know the moment and are changed by it. Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment-where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels-this moment shows us that what is real is sacred.
I am the elephant in the room. You know the concept? When someone proposes something that runs counter to your experience, counter to what you are comfortable doing or being, and so, rather than protest or speak up, you simple refuse to let the new experience change you. To undertake the tasks, the activity, or whatever, and yet refuse to be changed by it... internalise it. Refuse to learn... Where you could be enriched by the experience, you simply remain alone and bereft.
The most recent times this happened was when I received some feedback from a tutor on a course that I'm taking. I had, I'd thought, followed the guidance, done the research, and then was ready to submit the work as I was expected to do, but was left unfulfilled by it, because it did not fit with my own experience of such things and the knowledge I had previously gained on such matters. Yet stubbornly, because it was what was 'expected' I followed the rules and the expectations. The feedback, when it came, was less positive than it could have been, had I allowed the whole of the experience to affect the necessary changes, while maintaining my individuality of course.
And the whole thing has left me feeling rather alone - like a nomad in a huge desert world.
Changing to 'fit in' isn't always a good thing... and I've been burned rather badly by it very recently. It was a parents' evening at a school where I was doing a long term assignment. I didn't /have/ to stay and do it, but because I'm nothing if not a consumate professional, with a certain amount of professional pride, I agreed to stay - that's not really relevant to the story, except to feeling agrieved when later being told that I 'lacked commitment' to the school (a damned excuse if ever I heard one). The parents evening didn't start until five, leaving a couple of hours between the ending of school and the beginning of the meetings. I was invited out, and went out with the other staff at the school. During this social outing, I morphed to fit in with people I didn't really know well, wanting to fit in, joining in with their jokes (and I have to say, being accepted quite happily into their little social circle). Then I went away from the school for a while, and all of a sudden, I'm... well let's just say that my face doesn't fit.
It took me a while to figure out what went on, and to put the pieces together to make the whole jigsaw, but the long and short of it was, I had been put at a distance because people suddenly felt threatened by what they perceived I 'knew' because I'd been the Chameleon, fit in and joined their social circle and they had let their guard down and told someone who was, essentially a stranger, things that they wouldn't want getting back to others in authority.
And because of that, like the chameleon, though for utterly less positive reasons, I have been overlooked.
Right now, I'm on the biggest transormational journey that exists - life. Life's thrown many curved balls at me and I've seen and been a part of many experiences I could never have imagined, but right now the most immediate of those journey's that is life changing, or life changes that is a journey, is the path I am currently walking - a path to rediscover myself, to rediscover what it is to love and be loved, and for and in that, I have a wonderful companion, friend and balancing 'other half of my heart' It's a journay we're taking together, it's a secular journey as well as a spiritual one, and one that I hope is fulfilling. Along the way also I hope to rediscover a faith in myself, and in others... to truly find my inner pilgrim, and then to share her with others.
To journey without being changed
is to be a nomad.
To change without journeying
is to be a chameleon.
To journey and to be transformed
by the journey
is to be a pilgrim.
I understand these things so well, because I violate them so often. Yet I, as you, consider myself a pilgrim of the deepest kind, journeying beyond any one creed or tradition, into the compelling, recurring space in which we know the moment and are changed by it. Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment-where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels-this moment shows us that what is real is sacred.
I am the elephant in the room. You know the concept? When someone proposes something that runs counter to your experience, counter to what you are comfortable doing or being, and so, rather than protest or speak up, you simple refuse to let the new experience change you. To undertake the tasks, the activity, or whatever, and yet refuse to be changed by it... internalise it. Refuse to learn... Where you could be enriched by the experience, you simply remain alone and bereft.
The most recent times this happened was when I received some feedback from a tutor on a course that I'm taking. I had, I'd thought, followed the guidance, done the research, and then was ready to submit the work as I was expected to do, but was left unfulfilled by it, because it did not fit with my own experience of such things and the knowledge I had previously gained on such matters. Yet stubbornly, because it was what was 'expected' I followed the rules and the expectations. The feedback, when it came, was less positive than it could have been, had I allowed the whole of the experience to affect the necessary changes, while maintaining my individuality of course.
And the whole thing has left me feeling rather alone - like a nomad in a huge desert world.
Changing to 'fit in' isn't always a good thing... and I've been burned rather badly by it very recently. It was a parents' evening at a school where I was doing a long term assignment. I didn't /have/ to stay and do it, but because I'm nothing if not a consumate professional, with a certain amount of professional pride, I agreed to stay - that's not really relevant to the story, except to feeling agrieved when later being told that I 'lacked commitment' to the school (a damned excuse if ever I heard one). The parents evening didn't start until five, leaving a couple of hours between the ending of school and the beginning of the meetings. I was invited out, and went out with the other staff at the school. During this social outing, I morphed to fit in with people I didn't really know well, wanting to fit in, joining in with their jokes (and I have to say, being accepted quite happily into their little social circle). Then I went away from the school for a while, and all of a sudden, I'm... well let's just say that my face doesn't fit.
It took me a while to figure out what went on, and to put the pieces together to make the whole jigsaw, but the long and short of it was, I had been put at a distance because people suddenly felt threatened by what they perceived I 'knew' because I'd been the Chameleon, fit in and joined their social circle and they had let their guard down and told someone who was, essentially a stranger, things that they wouldn't want getting back to others in authority.
And because of that, like the chameleon, though for utterly less positive reasons, I have been overlooked.
Right now, I'm on the biggest transormational journey that exists - life. Life's thrown many curved balls at me and I've seen and been a part of many experiences I could never have imagined, but right now the most immediate of those journey's that is life changing, or life changes that is a journey, is the path I am currently walking - a path to rediscover myself, to rediscover what it is to love and be loved, and for and in that, I have a wonderful companion, friend and balancing 'other half of my heart' It's a journay we're taking together, it's a secular journey as well as a spiritual one, and one that I hope is fulfilling. Along the way also I hope to rediscover a faith in myself, and in others... to truly find my inner pilgrim, and then to share her with others.
