I see what I need to see, the perfect thing to move me along my unique path. Infinite worlds are appearing as one, taking on the mantle of sky and earth, of rich greens and the spectrum of blues, and yet, colored by how I look, the stories within my heart and mind, the expectations and beliefs that have worked their way into the tiny cracks and fissures of my particular anchor in the sea.  

Yesterday a friend responded to my piece about all that I didn’t know (I’ve added that post to the bottom of this one) and spilled her soul into the depths of my cells. She spoke to her experience of life, the world we are living in, the promises of freedom that are falling away, and at the end she said, and I paraphrase, that maybe we never had them, that perhaps it was a highly programmed illusion, never truly real.

Her words stayed with me and played inside my mind, sending this little body into a bit of a swirling whirlpool, a reckoning that churned my gut with a tinge of nausea. It didn’t last long. It felt like the last vestige of belief in my country simply died. Was it never real? Was it always a beautifully executed mass delusion? Were we entrained to see what others believed, what those in our world saw or wanted us to see?

It was undeniable once I read her words. It was here all along. I had simply chosen not to acknowledge it, to let the genie out of the bottle. Spiritually it was obvious. I had seen the illusion in my delusion years ago. My mind was already prepped. My body hadn’t quite caught up. You’d think it worked the other way, that we’d get it physically first and it would ripple into the mind, and then heart and soul, but in my experience that is catawampus. Here in 3D. the body is usually the last to get it. When the fallout arrives it feels like having to repeat a lesson already learned, but in actuality the lesson never stopped. Nothing does. It is always moving, percolating through the denser layers of reality. As far as I can tell, there is no end.

What hit my body, the material layer, was that my country wasn’t in the same world, let alone the same universe, as those who were black and brown, gay or trans, rich and powerful, poor and helpless, younger or older, hopeless and hungry, angry, disconnected and criminal, manipulative or merely end justifying, men and women.

I didn’t know, don’t know, their worlds. I never will. My world is a sweet cocoon of rights and protections, words taken literally, the power of good, the natural outflow of caring and compassion, love and inclusion. That is my world, or it was.

How can I say what is right and what is wrong? I only know my world and it had just fallen apart like Humpty Dumpty, not on a theoretical level, but all the way down to raw bones. I had to ask myself, just what world are you hanging onto? The answer escaped me. Even though the loss of that world ached in my marrow, there was no loss other than being awoken from a juvenile dream.  

When nothing remains of the dream, the body breathes a sigh of relief. There is no dream to defend, no dream to protect.  

The collective dream remains, seen to be a dream, consciously experienced as a dream, and I, the dreamed character, continue to dream walk. Although, without the need to protect and defend, what remains isn’t the angst and constant argument with life, the doubt about what I should be doing, or worry over doing it right or wrong. What remains is love, love for all the dreams and dreamers, love for this unfolding messy grotesque crazy beautiful masterpiece.

And love, despite its bad rap, isn’t all warm and fuzzy. It can be fierce, radical, a dance of anarchy. Left to its natural, unhindered flow it seeps into the world with amazing grace. These times are precious. Yes, they are filled with suffering and pain, but they are also powerful beyond words. They are shaking the tree of complacency, uprooting the hidden beliefs and stories, showing us clearly, undeniably what we didn’t know, the knowing that was based in fairytales, the certainty of our certainty.

Years ago, in my sadness at the state of the world, I asked the question, ‘Am I just here to witness Rome burn, or am I a vessel to ground love, a wrench to pry open the spigot of caring and compassion?’  Of course, at that moment in my ego’s story, I was rooting for the flood, one rivaling the stories of Noah, but every time I have asked, the answer has been the same. They are not mutually exclusive.

The post that inspired my friends question:

When I was 6, dressed up for Easter, my parent’s beliefs automatically accepted, so automatic that I didn’t even realize there was a choice, I didn’t know that my religion, the one that sang of Jesus loving all the children, that talked about him feeding the poor and caring for lepers, that said no one was excluded from his love, would change, would shift its focus from the message of Jesus’s love to the Old Testament of hate and violence, that it would allow politics to overshadow the beautiful words of the master, that this church I loved would take the lead in destroying the country that ensured its religious freedom.

I didn’t know.

When I was 16 and Dad refused to talk about the war, about the planes he flew over Germany, the bombs he dropped, the atrocities he fought, the freedoms he stood for, that it was possible to lose those freedoms in the blink of an eye, for one man’s hate to infect this country and blind too many eyes to his deceit.

I didn’t know.

When I was 18 and protesting Viet Nam at the U of O, I didn’t know that in 55 years, the right to protest would dissolve into thin air, that freedom of speech would be reserved for those who toed the administration’s line, that we would be stripped of our rights as Americans by men dressed like the Taliban, faces covered with cloth, hiding their identities right here at home.

I didn’t know.

When I was 19, meeting new people, people I would never have met in my conservative home town, when I was finding the beauty in diversity, the power in wide-ranging experiences, the strength in adversity I didn’t know was possible, I didn’t know that people I know and love, good men and women who weren’t like all the others, who would have been invited to sit with Jesus, would have a bullseye painted on their backs, would have to hide their beautiful lights, worry about being disappeared, would need to live secretive lives.

I didn’t know.

When I was 20, my friend crying on my shoulder, pregnant and abandoned, heartbroken by the choice she had made, a dark alley better than a coat hanger, the only choice that gave her a better chance to live, I didn’t know that in mere years, women would be making those same choices again, would be imprisoned for miscarrying, would be facing death sentences for breathing the word abortion, would be tracked down, monitored, and turned in. I thought that was impossible, reserved for radical uncaring uber religious worlds, worlds I had no interest in visiting let alone living in.

I didn’t know.

When I was 26 and brought my first child into the world, I didn’t know that I was bringing my sons into a world, a world not unlike the one that birthed the Civil War, where one would resist while the other cheered the perpetrators on. I didn’t know the world I was bringing them into would tear them apart, that brothers against brothers, guns in hand, was on the horizon, that hate would rule and love forgotten.

I didn’t know.

When I was 30, married and miserable, not yet free enough to break out of the prison in which I lived, abused and controlled, finally able to open a bank account in my name but afraid to do so, no money of my own, but crazily embracing the possibility of leaving my dependency behind, I didn’t know that I was supposed to be a man’s property, that I needed to be silent and obey, that I was only made for one thing, to have children and satisfy my husband’s urges. I thought women were people, that their needs were important, that this world was moving the right direction. I didn’t know that soon all that would change, that men, and women too, would roll back the clock, would attempt to drop a shroud over women’s right, would put a gag in the mouth of every woman who dared to be independent.

I didn’t know.

When I was 40, 50, 60, I lived into my potential. I found my voice. I discovered the stories I’d been told, the ones that I’d taken for truth were lies. I made money, got divorced, and married again and not being totally free of the programming, took his name. I didn’t know that my name changes would come back to bite me, that it would mean piles of paperwork to prove that I was me, that the name on my birth certificate and the one on my driver’s license belonged to the same person. I didn’t know that would ever be important, that it could mean the difference in proving that I shouldn’t be shunted into a black van and sent to who knows where. I didn’t know that who knows where is actually a place, and once you’re there, there’s no way home.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t believe this was possible and I am not alone in my not knowing. Maybe that’s the reason we are here right where we are, looking at our rights fall to the ground to be trampled upon, watching in horror as the Supreme Court ruling, a 9-0 ruling, is ignored, laughed at, and nothing is done about it. Maybe our complacency played its part. Maybe we are supposed to experience this cruelty and watch as people disappear, one after another. The watching is not worse than being the one to disappear. That is an abomination. Watching though, is intended to make us feel helpless, to stop us in our tracks, to make us draw back in, to send all resistance to its grave.

I didn’t know isn’t an answer. It’s not the answer even if it is true. I know now. I can’t unknow what is happening. I can’t believe that it will all work out. The time for that has died. People are being hurt. Families are suffering. People are dying slowly tortured behind concrete walls. I am complicit. My government is doing this. Not knowing is not an option.

Image: I’m the little one, the one who looks like she’s not happy about the choices others are making for her.

Featured Image: We Are All in the Same Boat, Banksy

Amaya Gayle is the author of Actuality; infinity at play, published by New Saram Press. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY