PERCHINGS AND FLIGHTS

I have a story I tell myself.  It's the story of myself, the one on which I build my identity. "I'm the on who...." and "this is who I am, that is who I am. These are my beliefs, this is the group I belong to, I never....I always..." It seems silly to say, "Isn't amazing that I go to bed at night and when I wake up in the morning I know who I am?" But it is amazing, that from moment to moment, I carry forward everything I mean when I say "me." William James described what he called the stream of consciousness, the internal continuity of "me-ness."  He uses a wonderful metaphor of birds both in flight and perching - our conscious thoughts are the perchings but the flights, the connections, are always there, not rising to be known, but running beneath and unifying all that we mean by "self." "I" am the stream with all its eddies and whirlpools and still surfaces, always in the flow.
     It also sounds silly to say how amazed I am that I can have a new idea; I can revise and redefine who I feel I was and who I feel I am now and who I think I'll be in the future.  I can learn something new about myself, see things in a different way, have a lifetime of epiphanies. I am able to reflect on myself - I can change my mind.  That ability is the glory of consciousness, that ideas and opinions aren't set in stone but are part of the great stream that is always changing, never the same stream twice - such a simple thing, that I can come to see things differently.
     I know why I remind myself of all this.  This view of my reality tells me I can change, that I can bind up all the fragments and shards inside that I don't understand, and come to feel myself whole, brimming with energy from that stream, constantly moving, reveling in the flow.
     I need to keep reminding myself of the possibility of change. All of it ephemeral and also a solid rock to stand on.
   
   

WHAT WOULD IT FEEL LIKE?

One day, in the middle of a deep depression, I was lying on my bed staring at the ceiling when seemingly out of nowhere I found myself saying the words of the 23rd Psalm.  This was strange; I'm not at all religious but I suppose that psalm is in the zeitgeist and I'd absorbed it without my knowing.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.

As I thought about the words, I suddenly heard the voice of the poet, of the man, probably King David, who had written those lines.  I heard his longing, his need for comfort. I felt the immediacy of his need across the centuries.
     I'd been in a very harsh place but those words made me wonder what it would be like if I was starving and came upon green pastures, or was thirsty and found cool waters.  Like an actor in a sense memory excercise, I imagined what it would feel like to be restored to some kind of equilibrium, not by something out there beyond my consciousness but by coming in touch with the part of me that could reach for well-being, the part of me that could come out from under and move into action.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of death,
I will fear no evil for Thou art with me...
And surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I felt the poet's emotion and I heard the words as metaphor.  What would it be like to feel I wasn't alone and helpless, that there was at least the possibility of a refuge inside me, a place that was safe, a place I could count on?  I had made a deep connection with that human voice across the centuries, those words of longing and the search for solace, and the intensity of that connection released energy, a spark of hope.  It would take a long time for that hope to grow and transform into the certainty that comes from direct experience. But just a glimmer of hope was all that was needed to take the first step out of despair and doubt.