If you show up on my doorstep, I’ll understand that you were summoned. Or sent. No difference. All the same. I don’t need to decide whether to let you inside or not. Something else will have already done this for me.
I am not naive. In fact, working in the territory of trauma as I did for so long, I believe little. The people I trust can easily be counted on one hand. This is the result of having met evil more than once, having learned something about those who deliberately choose this way of living. As you’ve heard me say, early in my career I was shocked to learn the who and how of this. And by evil I don’t mean ordinary meanness, or even deliberate destruction. But, I’ve talked about this elsewhere.
No, I am not innocent of what is, but I choose which world I inhabit. I know what feeds my spirit. The deer and the coyote, the forest and the desert. And water - the way it wraps around stone, plays with light and color, and teaches me something about the nature of creation.
The reason I avoid the drama of movies and television, is not only about image, but also about the foundational nature or language. I want words to reverberate in their archaic meaning. If I go to the mountain, I want the totality of my being to be permeated with the understanding of what I am doing, of where I am going.
When I write, sometimes I don’t know what I mean, until the writing is finished. I want words to work on me, and take me further than I thought I could go. I have heard people say that English is a ‘trade language’ meant only for commerce, but this is not true. Or it needn’t be.
For these reasons, I avoid dramatic sources trying to imprint my spirit, to dominate my imagination and permeate my world. I have no obligation to those sources, nor to their messages. By this I don't mean listening to friends in need, helping in an emergency.
If I belong somewhere I am not, the spirit is strong enough to put me there. If there is something I need to tend that I am not, the spirit will send the message.
In the meantime, I will care for my consciousness with the tenderness of a good mother. Or father. With the knowledge that I have been given the reality I asked for, and it is to this I owe my allegiance.