If you look in the eyes of a young child, one or two years old, very often it looks as if there is a light on in there. In an adult this light is gone. Where does it go? What happens to it? What is the difference between this child and me that I no longer glow with this brightness? Where is my light?
This, for me, might be said to be the heart of the question of life. And, although the difference between this child and me can be formulated easily enough, the ability to move freely in both worlds is the ultimate challenge of our humanness.
The difference is simple. The child is bright because her awareness is not consumed by worry about her person. For her, the idea that she is a person does not exist. And so she is relaxed.
What We Have Forgotten...
What we have forgotten as adults is that the person we have each assumed ourselves to be is only an idea — an idea we one day acquired. An idea with which, as adults, we are permanently obsessed. Our living energy is being used to keep a squirrel cage spinning.
There is a direct link between person-hood and awareness. Person-hood consumes awareness. Awareness — our live energy — is the material out of which our persons are fabricated. Less person equals more awareness; more person equals less awareness. It is a simple mathematical relationship.
I am not implying it is easy to let go of the attachment to one's person. Neither am I implying that it is better. I am only pointing out that if there is a shortage of awareness, this is where we might begin looking for it.
Values, New and Old
There are values that are generated out of interactions with the world of people, and there are values that are yours already.
What appears on the scene one day, born of the pain and confusing the two, is the desire to tell the difference. If there is anything that can be pointed to that can be called the self, it is this desire.
What do you want? Before this world offered its relative values to you, what did you want? Who were you? If there were no one to pass judgment on you, what would you be pursuing? Who are you, really?
Tune to yourself. Take no cues unquestioned from outside. In the end there is no other way. All external authority is empowered by your authority alone. It cannot be otherwise.
To be a self is to be in utter solitude. And only in utter solitude are we really in each other's company.
About The Author
Clifton Baron is a metaphysical writer who has engaged his full focus on the absolute understanding of the true nature of the self. Clifton lives in Berkeley, California where he spends his time teaching, writing and raising his family. He can be reached at: 6256 Merced Avenue, Oakland, CA 94611.
