I found myself at a public park the other day with nothing to do. My two oldest were in a class. My youngest was sleeping in his stroller, and my third child was off adventuring with new "friends" (whomever she is playing at the park at the moment with - don't you love that!).
I don't carry a cell phone. And I didn't have a book. So I reverted to what I sometimes do when there is nothing else to do: meditate. I am not the best meditator, and as I generally only get around to it when there is nothing else to do.... Well, I bet you can guess that I'm grossly under-practiced.
Still, as I sat in the sun, I tried to clear my mind and just be. I noticed how rich with sound the park was. Instead of listening and labeling - what hearing usually means, I let the sounds wash over me. And an interesting thing happened: I couldn't understand language anymore. When I gave each noise equal value and attention, which is to say I was trying to give all sounds no value and pay attention to them all, the words of all the speakers (adults near me and kids as they ran by) faded into a soft babble.
Cool!
Here is where my meditation really ended, because I began to think thoughts I thought about and considered pretty smart, and wanted to blog about. :) So here they are!
First, I began to assume that is how infants experience the world. Of course, we know they don't understand language at first. But it hadn't occurred to me that they begin life at a more basic level than that. They don't yet understand the concept of language. In other words, they don't yet have the experience of sorting through the sounds around them to pick out voices, label them as voices, focus in on the voices, and let the rest pass without notice. Their mental filter is off. An adult's filter is usually set to very high. How often have you been listening to one thing and not heard another? Or midst all the noise around you, heard your baby cry?
That is a great example of a filter set to very high, and why HAVING a filter is desirable.
Back to the meditation, or my thoughts about it. THEN I began to consider that even adults can have malfunctioning filters. A baby very quickly learns to identify his mother's voice. In fact, he's got that one nailed before coming out, and just needs to put the voice with the face. But in certain areas, even vital to survival, how often do we adults allow ourselves to be washed over with a clamor of voices and experience the resulting confusion.
How easy is it to do that about homeschooling? Homeschooling can be a daunting endeavor! I think we can be easily tempted to mentally and emotionally take in more voices than we can sort out or make sense of. What is SHE using for curriculum? How do THEY schedule their days? What are the schools teaching and when? My mother-in-law thinks the kids will be socially maladjusted. The teacher down the road says she's never met a homeschooler who was "caught up" in math. Etc., etc., etc.
That is why my blog is so ironic. (I wish it was also filled with ironic wit. Alas.) Here I am shouting at you. Adding my voice to all the other voices tossing about opinions for you to consider. (For this very reason, I avoided blogging for FOREVER. I don't want anyone thinking, "Oh that is what Steffanie does? Maybe we should try THAT." And it seems that one who never READS blogs shouldn't think she has any business WRITING one.)
But then there is this: "The instinct is sure which prompts one to tell his brother what one thinks." That's Emerson, in his "The American Scholar" address.
And what I really think and believe is this: "The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee." (Emerson again in his address "The Over-Soul.") Put another way in yet another address, "Thy lot or portion of life is seeking after thee; therefore, be at rest from seeking after it."
Okay, one last quote because I'm really getting carried away now with Emerson quotes. "Truly speaking, it is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul. What [she] announces [in her blog], I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on [her] word, be [she] who [she] may, I can accept nothing."
Which is not to say you must stop reading MY blog. ;) Or finding answers by talking to people. After all, we are all sharing by sure instinct what we think. What WE (Emerson and I... ha!) are saying is, the truth of what you need to do, or how to solve a problem will find you. And it will ring as being true inside. Turn your filter on and TUNE IN to yourself. Hear your heart. And TRUST. Trust yourself to be right. Trust your instincts.
Finally, I know I said the last quote above was the last, but no one was here to intervene by grabbing my journal of favorite quotes, so I'll share this deep thought that has "rung true" for me. "I don't pretend to have all the answers. I don't pretend to even know what the questions are. Hey, where am I?" ~Jack Handy.
'Nuff said.
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