Why I am such an ASS...(and so are you)
One of my favorite word “plays” is with the word assume and when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. So often in life, our assumptions are based on our own life experiences, our own traumas and wounds, and our own desires and fears. Assumption and misperception are besties and together they shove gratitude in a dark closet and bolt the door shut. Because we assume there is always tomorrow and next week, it’s like a permission slip to love less, to not try quite as hard, and to play small. Because we misperceive the divine miracle of our being a human and this planet Earth, we tend to make problems out of no problems, monsters out of mice, and mountains out of mole hills.
When I think I know what you are going to think or say or how you are going to feel, I do myself the disservice of ever truly connecting with you. In my assumed thinking, not only do I cut off the opportunity for me to experience the true you, I cut off the opportunity for me to experience the true me. Because now, my words and actions are based on what I think you’ll think, without ever asking you what you think. It’s like going to a restaurant and without ever asking, the waiter or waitress just brings you the Filet Mignon and then wonders why the heck he or she got no tip. They brought you the best meal in the house, or so they think, and are baffled when you don’t ever touch it because they assumed that no vegetarian would ever eat at the most revered steak house in town. What they did not realize is that you were treating your man to his birthday dinner and quite frankly meat gives you the heebie jeebies!
Believing our false knowing is our demise. Because we have experienced something in the past, we tend to haul it along with us and continuously place it in our present, where it has absolutely no right to be. And then, we hide behind it. So if I want to talk to you in this now moment, it’s like I am shouting over all of my experiences of which I have stacked in front of me, and hoping that you’ll hear what I’m saying. But by the time those words get to you, they are all muffled and distorted. Not only do I have to shout over my experiences, I have to shout over yours as well, because you also have all of your past experiences lined up in front of you. It’s no wonder we are all fighting to be heard and seen and feeling misunderstood.
The time to clean house is now. The time to not know, is now. Because the truth, the real truth, is that you have never been in this moment before and neither has anyone else, the awe and power and mystery that it beholds is unknown to any of us. We must dismantle the relationship between misperception and assumption, unlock the closet door, and re-build our relationship with gratitude and trust. To simply be grateful to be alive in this moment and trust that by living it, free from the ghosts of all previous moments, is where the treasure of enoughness will be revealed, not buried or even hidden, but there, waiting patiently for us to open our minds and our hearts and feel the satiation of the entirety that only this moment can behold.
Dearest Reader,
It is to you that I offer my thanksgiving. I offer my smile and my understanding that you are human just like me. If these words have inspired your clarity, whether in agreement or disagreement, or simply thought provoking, then my mission has been accomplished. This blog was inspired by my study on the vrtti’s (thought waves or fluctuations that occupy our heart mind space). More specifically, the focus was on the second vrtti or viparyaya defined as incorrect knowledge/misperception.
Mahalo and Namaste,
Andrea Dawn
