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I am the archer,
I am the bow,
I am the arrow,
I am the goal.
* * *
The air is stirred
By the flight
Of my arrow.

Inside or out, I am compelled by meaning, a phantom soup of emotions, images, sensations and words. I chase after pleasure, and run away from pain, both dependant on the sometimes invisible results I create with my conditioned mind. Both can be reversed—accepting pain and avoiding pleasure—if the end result gets me what I want.

A flower unfolds. To one nose it is a fragrant delight, to another a repugnant smell. In either case it is a plant, dancing a blossom dance, pushing its essence into the world to attract a vehicle for its pollination—bees, bats, butterflies, the wind—unaware and unconcerned about which monkey loves it and which does not.

My monkey self wonders at the enigma of consciousness, sometimes aware of being aware, other times carving the world into pieces, calling this piece plant and that piece weed. When I am forgetful I feel separate, alone, thinking this consciousness is unique to my primate kind. It is easy to rip a weed from the ground when it does not match my definition of a garden. Sometimes I forget: it is all the garden.

Somewhere in time, from a memory of searching for new meanings, a voice advises, “Stay out of the results.” Anticipating results thrills me and terrifies me. Possibilities wear many disguises. What are the consequences of imagining I am a weed in others’ gardens? How could it be that I imagine myself to be a weed and not a flower?

I am the garden, the soil, the sewer and the seed. Sometimes I am too ready to name one thought “flower” and another “weed,” forgetting to honor the life that flows through forms. I forget that, in the truth of the First Garden story, all things in the awareness of the Elohim are recognized as “good.” Even in the naming of things, by mythic ancestral me, all things were good. Somehow, as Story Teller, I found it necessary to explain my frustration, anger, and sense of separation as an act of disobedience rather than ignorance.

As the archer, when I miss the target, it is not because I am bad, but because I forgot the wholeness of the process. When I remember I see that I am always on target. Hardest of all, perhaps, is the realization that the naming of self as “disobedient” is my attempt to push my Self into awareness, to survive.

Just as I seek to carve the world of my experience into smaller and smaller pieces of meaning, in cosmology and particle physics, striving to understand my self as universe, so too do I look again to the wholeness I am. Struggling to awaken I repeat again and again, “God is seated in my heart, and works his perfect will through my life.” Something in me rebels until the truth of it dawns on me. And later still this separation vanishes.

When I look around, I see that all paths lead up the mountain. Another me might say all paths lead to the same abyss. Either way the words serve as lifelines we use to navigate the now, to give meaning to the now. Regardless of the meaning I give to things, be it Zeus, spirits living in a tree, or the sacred nature of the All-That-Is, I will arrive at the same portal, sooner or later, as a leaf that falls from a tree.

It is also my nature to be as certain or skeptical of the Beyond as the needs of my consciousness dictate. God is a Certainty to some, a Question Mark to others, Irrelevant to others yet, and beyond, to others, Nonexistent. It is a matter of focus, where I place my attention, inward or out, on the weed or the flower.

In the Christian tradition, reconciling myself to it, Jesus gives me great clues to the ultimate location of truth, as I understand it, at the core of all traditions. Distilling his teachings into three essential sentences, “To you it is given to know the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven. I will give you the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”

When I do not understand the role my emotions play for me, or if I have choked them off from my awareness because they are too painful, too frightening, the “within me” part can seem as much like the gates of hell as the gates of heaven. A major key to comprehending the Kingdom within is understanding my emotions.

They are not messages about my being. They do not tell me who I am. They are messages from my being, signals, whose meaning awaits my discovery in ways the world, for the most part, did not teach me to understand.

They are my guidance system. I signal myself with them. They are physical sensations in my body, reactions to hormones released into my bloodstream. I am not my emotions. I have emotions. When my internal and external worlds mismatch each other I experience the range of emotions I call “negative,” the weeds. When there is a match, I experience the flowers.

Buddha is reported to have said, “Our life is shaped by our minds; we become what we think.” How I experience myself is a matter of my mind’s definition, and my emotions signal me if the definition is working for me, or not.

I am the aim of my own life, in this form, at this time. How do I want to experience it, and what will empower me?

And you?

David Lintner, a former Lutheran Pastor, has been involved in NLP and Ericksonian Hypnosis for 15+ years. David conducts NLP training and seminars for businesses and the general public. He offices in Claremont, CA. e-mail: david.lintner@verizon.net 909-621-6883