TIME, LOVE and the DREAM Of FAMILY
[An allegory]
Throughout much of
our lives, it is as though we exist in some timeless place – in some wondrous
way we walk through the days of our journey as though – really – we were in a streaming
dream. Sometimes we awake from the life-dream with a shock – say when looking
into a mirror: where is the forever-young person that we feel ourselves
to be? Who is that stranger with the age-lines and sadder yet wiser eyes, that
peers back at us? It is in such moments that we may even catch a glimpse of the
two intertwined fundamental realities of the self, that mysteriously we are
timeless in essence, yet concurrently imbedded in – and co-existing with – the
flux of time-movement.
Perhaps, under some
lucky star, one may be startled out of one’s normal, internal timeless
dream-space when meeting another, as when a man meets the woman,
when they gaze at each other, when their glances lock. Then Time palpably
moves, kicks in. Then it is as though Time celebrates the remaking of itself
through its creatures, reasserting its own creative powers so as to again
appreciate the reality of its myriad streams of Being. When a man and woman
encounter each other in that way, each conjures a future life with the other –
within their exchanged gaze, the couple’s mind (now one) reaches forward to a
future state: the nascent conjoint-mind dreams its future time-space – the
abode of its new life – into manifestation. A portion of the conjoint
dream may be the tangible expression of love – the manifestation of a link in
the chain of embodiment – the generational continuum. This is the story of the
dream of Life herself, embedded within its creatures – the passing on of the
gift of mortal existence.
From Kahlil Gibran’s
“The Prophet
”:
When love
beckons to you, follow him,
Though
his ways are hard and steep.
And when
his wings enfold you, yield to him,
Though the
sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when
he speaks to you believe in him,
Though
his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even
as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is
he for your pruning.
Even as
he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in
the sun,
So shall
he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like
sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He
threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts
you to free you from your husks.
He grinds
you to whiteness.
He kneads
you until you are pliant;
And then
he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's
sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart…
And should the couple
honour Life’s dream, what was two becomes one
through the joining of their lives together – a new entity is created which
embodies their former physical and spiritual states, their dreams and energies.
In the fullness of time, the couple’s dream may become manifest though flows of
supporting and nurturing energies transferring between themselves, and together
they build relative success according to the standards of their time.
Again, Gibran’s
message concerning Marriage:
You
were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You
shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye,
you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But
let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And
let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love
one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it
rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill
each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give
one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing
and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even
as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give
your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For
only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And
stand together, yet not too near together:
For
the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And
the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
…and, in the fullness
of time, the two may procreate a family the members of which will initially be
dependent upon them – a family comprising creatures issuing from, and nurtured
by, the natural energies of their aspirations.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Over time, an old
friend – himself a self-made business success after emigration from another
culture – repeatedly expressed his pride in his adult children, reviewing their
respective successes in detail, and his role in platforming their achievements,
with which he was intimately involved. When no attempt was made to reciprocate,
he pressed – to which we responded that in our own way we were also proud of
our family, yet were not involved in their lives, nor in the lives of our
grandchildren, preferring that our detachment and non-interference be sensed as
a testimonial of our confidence that we had properly prepared our children by
moving them beyond dependency to mature independence, empowered to carry
forward their roles in Life’s scheme. This had clearly troubled our friend, who
gently commented on this perspective as dysfunctional from that of his own
culture, where family was everything.
Recently our friend
again enquired as to how we could cope, and he was assured that our position
was not the result of any lack of affection for family members, but that – as a
result of many deserved career promotions and related transfers – we had
ourselves evolved to be able to appreciate a natural order in relationships:
that it is best to observe the protocols where possible; that it is also good
to help others but not to the point of making them over-dependent; that over
time all relationships need space and the opportunity to grow and learn to
exist on their own; and that in time all relationships end, yet the personal
mandate is on survival so as to be able to carry on. Seeing that we had openly
confided what had – for ourselves – been a difficult passage, he proceeded to
confide in detail his own current and grievous disappointment as to treatment
he and his wife had experienced within the family nexus, and we shared with him
the following passage on “Children” (again from The Prophet):
Your
children are not your children.
They are
the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They
come through you but not from you,
And
though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You
may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For
they have their own thoughts.
You
may house their bodies but not their souls,
For
their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not
even in your dreams.
You
may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For
life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You
are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The
archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His
might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let
your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Our friend’s mood
lifted, his troubled eyes clarified, and as he left with “The Prophet” in
pocket; one sensed that he and his wife would gain some comfort in recasting
their own dream to accord with that of Life.
. . . . . . . . .
How do parents fall
into the trap of supposed child ownership? Perhaps, believing that they are
already living in full awareness, the couple may never think to check to see if
their issue – their dream children – are real ends in their own
right, or only means – puppets – within the parents’ dream.
Parents may forget their own experience – how necessary it was that each person
be a real end in the sense of having personal self-awareness so
as to evolve the courage to define themselves as worthy, independent creations
of their lineage – possessing a sense of their own creative uniqueness in
living up to the traditions of their human heritage. Contrary to the family
dream-script, all-too-frequently the couple’s children (with the help of their
own spouses) may have to take measures to forge their own
time-space dream domain, even – if the two think necessary – to the point of
abdicating the assigned roles in any parental dream. The parents may initially
construe their children to be ingrates, disloyal, evasive concerning family
interests, and of a manipulative and persecutory nature, and may be hurt in
perceiving their children don’t uphold even perfunctory standards of respect and
honour towards themselves, withholding not only their own personal presence,
but also the presence of their own issue – the grandchildren. And not just for
a season, but for many, many years… Yet, from the priority of those in the house
of tomorrow, the adult child (and spouse) must be vigilant against
well-meaning but implicitly indulgent / manipulative parental moves that could
be obstacles to the cohesive establishment of their own nest, and impediments
to their capacity to independently learn how to discharge their duties and
responsibilities to their own dependents.
The parents must not
fall into the pit of blaming themselves and each other for their loss, and it
may take some extended time for the parents to awaken from their dream of
family that has turned into – for themselves – a nightmare wherein they
construe that their creations are intentionally wounding them. Yet even
in the midst of the parents’ tragedy there may be elements of lucidity present
– a part of the couple’s awareness not caught up in the dream may realize that
whatever their creations do – or don’t do – is on their own personal account,
and not of the parents’ ‘doing’ or ‘not doing’, and in some way may be
necessary in accordance with some higher priority. That there is a deep wisdom
accorded by Life, whereby instinctive impulses for growth and independence may
be transmuted into desirable forms of self-reliance and spirited
forthrightness. As a caterpillar transforms into butterfly, one way or another
our children are required to self-create into vehicles capable of meeting
challenges to the continuance of the human dream. Our
Children - Not always right, but always prepared to fight – and to be seen
fighting – for what they believe right. [1]
And so the bereft parents
counsel and comfort each other in their joint tragedy, and over time come to
understand that their loss was not because of any deficiency in the potency of
their own dream powers, but simply arose because sometimes we are compelled to
assume apparently destructive means in pursuing personally imperative ends.
Otherwise, the parents’ grieving may dissolve not just the ‘family dream’
component; the couple’s main conjoint dream – their life-sustaining love for
each other – may become a mortal casualty. The grieving parents reluctantly
awaken, perhaps having been directed to the writings of R.D. Laing, of Harry
Stack Sullivan, of Virginia Satir, or George Santayana.
Santayana,
Spanish/American professor of naturalistic philosophy at Harvard and Oxford for
decades, observed about families:
“Parental functions
in nature are limited to nursing the extremely young. This phase of the
instinct, being the most primitive and fundamental, is most to be relied upon
even in man. Especially in the mother, care for the children's physical
well-being is unfailing to the end. She understands the vegetative soul, and
the first lispings of sense and sentiment in the child have an absorbing
interest for her. In that region her skill and delights are miracles of nature;
but her insight and keenness gradually fade as the children grow older. Rare is
there any genuine community in life and feeling between parents and their adult
children. Often the parents' influence comes to be felt as a dead constraint,
the more cruel that it cannot be thrown off without unkindness; and what makes
the parents' claim at once unjust and pathetic is that it is founded on
passionate love for a remembered being, the child once wholly theirs, that no
longer exists in the man.”
And concerning
personal development, Santayana had this to say:
“The full-grown human
soul should respect all traditions and understand all passions; at the same
time it should possess and embody a particular culture, without any unmanly
relaxation or mystical neutrality. Justice is one thing, indecision is
another, and weak. If you allow all men to live according to their genuine
natures, you must assert your own genuine nature and live up to it.”
And thus with the aid
of Time and Love, the couple realize that their family dream is not viable
solely through the power of their own projection; that there is no magical way
in which they can ever “help” their estranged children through contriving an
easy re-linkage with their parents; and that they are fortunate in now being
able to see through – and relinquish – the traps of their earlier illusory
dream of family. Then, if still healthy, they can rechannel their energies
toward dealing with less intractable, more productive aspects of Life.
As they did at the
beginning of their path, the individuals again measure each other – looking
deeply into each other’s eyes, into each other’s hearts – and time once again
moves creatively with them. With humble patience - yet with intense passion –
the two rejoice in again being as one.
Keith and Marnie
Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site
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