Thursday, January 2, 2014

1/3/14—Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

I discovered a viral video today. I was the 28,885,754th person to discover it, in fact. Which is kind of how things tend to go with me and internet phenomena anyway. So excuse if me if you're already familiar with "Emotional baby! Too cute!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIsCs9_-LP8

Usually the words "baby" and "cute" come off to me like "danger" and "shield your eyes" do to normal folk, but I clicked anyway. And what I found wasn't really cute at all. Instead, it was utterly fascinating.

See, this mom was singing a song to her baby about losing a love and missing them as they move on without her. And all the while the baby sits there and silently cries, tears streaming down its face. Now, we have few clues as to what the mom is doing as she's singing, but based on her voice, she's not in all-out diva drama mode. So the baby doesn't seem to be mimicking the mom or her emotion, rather she seems to feeling the lyrics of the song. Because I'm no baby expert, I checked with a mother of four. This is not normal baby behavior.

Probably more than 20 years ago, my sister Janet said something to me that has stuck with me ever since. She said she believed that babies were born knowing everything. Then they forget. Then, I guess, we spend the rest of our lives trying to remember. So when I see things like the crying baby (or child prodigies or kids with past lives...we'll get to them in a future post), it sets my mind whirring. It really makes me think about what goes on before the life we're living.

The topic is too large to cover in just one entry. But when I look at that crying baby reacting to the lyrics of the song, it makes me think of whatever peace and camaraderie they left behind to come here to perform their mission. Look, for all I know the mother was making faces that caused the baby's reactions and was spraying noxious fumes into the baby's eyes to make it cry. But that didn't seem to be the character of what was going on there.

A couple of weeks ago I had a remarkable experience at my monthly music healing session. I was brought to a place of utter peace, oneness, everythingness and love...like I was part of the fabric of the universe or an observer inside the head of God. It's hard to imagine what the experience of a soul must be like without anthropomorphizing it...without giving it human characteristics, like a body or emotions or thought. But this state I enjoyed in my session was, for the most part, without thought. It was at once energy and intelligence, and non-intelligent and non-energetic ether. It was, simply put, unimaginable and undefinable. And it made me think that this might be what a soul is like before it takes form and humanness and personality.

So imagine what it would be like to go from a place of utter balance and harmony and be plopped into the wild roller coaster ride of human emotion. Imagine what it would be like to be suddenly confined to a body instead of being limitless....to be held to the structures of space and time when just "yesterday" you existed on every dimension at once. Somewhere between remembering where we just were and forgetting who we are eternally may just be what babies and small children experience. And what I saw on that baby's face was the mourning of its previous state and whatever connections may be missed there while on this wild human adventure.

Will they ever see the reflection of their soul again? Will what they gain be as valuable as what they lost by coming here? Will the members of their soul group (if that exists) join them on this journey? What's with all this helplessness? What's with all this lack of communication? How come the mommy doesn't feel me the same way I feel her? How do I drive this thing? WTF have I gotten myself into!!!???

There's something really captivating about that video. I've never in person or on TV seen tears stream silently out of a baby's eyes, displaying emotions an infant could not possibly know or comprehend...unless something ethereal and otherworldly is going on that we cannot possibly know or comprehend. So it brings up so much in me.

Like what is a soul? If you had asked me three months ago, my answer would have been different than the answer I have after that healing session.

Why are we here? I honestly go back and forth on that, because the whole soul experience makes no logical sense to me. If the soul is connected to "the all that is" and shares that intelligence, then why go from a state of perfection/omniscience/angelhood/whatever to this flawed state of humanness? It would seem like a soul would have nothing to learn...no desires or curiosities to sate.

The farther down the rabbit hole I go and the more "answers" I seem to satisfy myself with, the more questions I have and the less I seem to know. Thus is the paradox of being human and seeking spirituality. What's your take on all of this? And does that baby conjure the same questions in you?

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