Journey To The Center Of Our Ego, Part 1

Shawn Tedrow

I recently went on a vacation to Belize and Guatemala. A couple days before Jenny and I left the USA on this excursion, a title for a new RT post came to my mind that paralleled and interfaced with a famous novel. I wasn't in the mood to write though, as my personal agenda for this vacation was to let go of doing anything related to spiritual content.

I was planning on doing a mental fast to get a fresh new perspective on life. I didn’t want to write. I desired to posture my inner heart into being a good listener of life, with my ears being uncluttered from my inclined conceptions. I figured if I got into writing an essay, I wouldn’t be in a suitable listening mode. I wonder though, if sometimes while transcribing thoughts into words, that we actually are engaging ourselves in being an active listener?

This new post wouldn't leave me alone. Besides not leaving me alone, this emerging observation looked like it was going to be a lot of work for me. That was the opposite of what I wanted. I basically had the story of a novel, a title for the post, and involuntary disjointed thoughts flying in every direction.

This unintended sprouting thesis had many deep subject matters, and it was in need of me to toil in earnest thinking, in order for it to be organized and structured to make any sense. This was going to be a very difficult task for me, and without having a clue what to write, I resisted and fought getting into it. It kept rising to my mind though. These uninvited streams of thoughts just wouldn’t leave me alone.

In one sense, these rising thoughts were rather obnoxious, as I just wasn’t in the mood for it. In another sense, I felt like I was being enticed by a luring potion, to go into a mysterious dream-like portal of a river of imaginative inspiration. It was as if I was unconsciously hearing subliminal music, and I would find myself moving to its rhythmic pulse, in the form of ascending thoughts that were dancing to its drumbeat.

Writing can be an interesting journey, where it can feel like you are not the one initiating it, but some kind of inspirational wind is blowing on the sails of thought, navigating you to a place that was not planned.

This gentle, but relentless, seducing-like sensation, to start writing this post, seemed borderline crazy, as if I might be losing my mind. I didn’t tell Jenny about what I was going through because it might appear that I was going nuts.

The chance that this was indeed madness became a little bit of a challenge for me. If I surrendered into this enchantment, and nothing came of it, I would be very concerned for myself that I might be at the beginning stages of auditory hallucinations. I wasn’t given any comfort concerning this apprehension of mine, as it felt like taking a chance was the cost that was required of me to go into this mysterious gateway. It was as if I was being asked let go of myself, by relinquishing my guards, from completely going off the deep end, by trusting that engaging in these mysterious formation of thoughts didn’t mean I was flirting with insanity. But it might!

I continued on to barricade myself from this continual bombardment of thoughts until the very last day of our vacation. On that day, something very unusual took place.

To be continued……

You can check out Shawn's other musings here.