By Amaya Gayle
Living in and as a paradox isn’t easy for the mind that craves certainty. Just as soon as you grab ahold of one answer, the story shifts. It’s a lot like camping. Can you catch smoke from a fire? It may drive you crazy, leave its smell in your clothing. It may even cause you to get up and move but catch it you cannot. It slips right through your fingers, an ethereal will-o’-the-wisp, never the same appearance from one second to the next.
That’s life.
As much as you want to nail it down, life refuses any and all labels you employ. You know the feeling. Every time you think you’ve got it, life does its little jig leaving you standing on the dance floor without a partner. The music plays on and all that’s required is a shift in your hard stance, but the shift is far from easy. Sometimes it feels like what you thought was so, simply waves its hand at you — over here, no over here, no here, whack-a-mole on steroids.
So you attempt to make the notes fit together, trying to sing that same ol’ song, even though something at the back of your mind is telling you that you are stuck in the groove, and it isn’t groovy, or at the least, you are missing something critically important.
After all, you’re invested. You’ve been singing that song, dancing that dance, for as long as you can remember, and like it or not, your identity is caught up in maintaining that particular version of truth. It’s what most everyone does, whether they are propping up what they were taught as a child, the latest gobbledygook out of their current saviors mouth, or their last point in a debate with a friend. We seem to have a need to be right.
I certainly did, but not so much anymore. It felt safer to have the answer. Of course it did. In a world that is absolutely not safe, that is totally at the whim of nobody, of nothing at all, where we could literally die with our next breath, having the answers, an answer, any answer feels like the only safe place to stand at the dance of life and death.
One day I woke from sleep — the literal sleep, head on the pillow, opening my eyes to a new day … damn, so many analogies 😉 — put on my clothes, thought about where I was going to walk that day, and my heart went into Ventricular Tachycardia. For those of you not familiar — count your lucky stars — it is when the heart rate goes from 60 to 250 in a breath. Of course, the heart doesn’t pump blood at that rate, so if it doesn’t slow down, you die.
I went to bed a healthy woman and woke up a breath from death. There was no reason. For some of us, it just happens that way. They call it MUPS or medically unexplained physical symptoms. I had no choice but to learn to live with the recognition that death could take me any damn time it wanted. We all live with that. Most of us, though, don’t have to make friends with it. Looking back, it was a gift. At the time, not so much.
For those living in death-is-real-but-a-ways-off denial, that unmet uncertainty, that standing death sentence, is the reason we are compelled to find answers and why we hang so desperately onto the answers we find. Whether they are true to another, to the general population, to those we love or loved, doesn’t really matter. They are our lifeline.
To one hooked on their remedy for uncertainty, it doesn’t matter if there is no right or that what is right is simply their latest greatest brilliantly best version of now, and it’s the same for all of us, to varying degrees. We’re all arguing about nothing other than our preferred versions of life.
Sure, some appear to be hurtful and some to heal, some bring a smile and others are tear makers, some seem to cause pain even death, others wrap the arms of love around us all, but is one right and the other wrong? Only to the one hanging onto their answer and only for as long as we keep our eyes and hearts closed and don’t look further.
Truth is dependent. It depends on so many things: on how long it’s been since you had food in your belly; whether you have a safe space to sleep; if someone you love is threatened and how all-inclusive that love is; the depth of your wounds; whether your unwillingness to be ruthless has fallen apart yet; if you see win at any cost as an option, a preference or a non-starter; how you perceive your upbringing and the scars you carry, self-imposed or not; the karma you were born with; the collective’s mindset; the unpredictable events surrounding you; the openness of your heart. The list is endless. Infinite variables go into what we see as right and wrong.
If truth is relative, different for each of us, how can there be truth at all?
Does there need to be? Do you need there to be? Rather than looking for truth, it might be fun to inquire into the need for truth, your attachment to your versions of truth. Just sayin’.
There is no appropriate bio for Amaya Gayle. She doesn’t exist other than as an expression of Consciousness Itself. Talking about her in biographical terms is a disservice to the truth and to anyone who might be led to believe in such nonsense. None of us exist, not in the way we think. Ideas spring into words. Words flow onto paper and yet no one writes them. They simply appear fully formed. Looking at her you would swear this is a lie. She’s there after all, but honestly, she’s not. Bios normally wax on about accomplishments and beliefs, happenings in time and space. She has never accomplished anything, has no beliefs and like you was never born and will never die. Engage with Amaya at your own risk.
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