Inner Gathering: Introduction (Chapter 7) REVISED
Based on your feedback, here's the second draft of Chapter 7
Something new this month! Rather than continuing with the next chapter, I drew upon your excellent feedback about Chapter 7 and revised it into a second draft, so you can witness the impact you’re having on this book. For this chapter alone, the following folks will be acknowledged in the final manuscript: Mike Wagner, JC Cloe, Teresa Dever, Donna Urban, Rae, and Nancy. Thank you for your contributions!
As always, if you need a refresher before reading Chapter 7, you can click here to read Chapter 6. If you’re new here, you can click here to start from the beginning. Or you can get started right away on Chapter 7 below!
7 (Revised)
We’re there to celebrate the infant.
My wife’s niece has just had her first child, and the family is meeting him for the first time. We’re in a private room at a restaurant, and a long table is filled with aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and grandmothers. The nachos are piled high. The beer is cold. It’s fun. It’s festive. I’m enjoying myself.
Until I’m not.
The boy is being held against his dad’s chest, facing away from the table. He’s three-months old and he’s curious. He wants to see the action. He’s getting stronger but he can’t turn around on his own, so he cranes his neck to its limit and then starts to cry for assistance. When he starts to cry, he’s facing me. Someone says, “Oh, he doesn’t like you.”
And my good time is over.
To be clear, this a relatively insignificant moment. On a big rock hurtling through space, where all sorts of horrors are happening every day, a baby cried and someone guessed why. In the grand scheme of things, it means nothing. However, it does mean something to my three protectors. Indeed, it’s the very reason for their existence. And they have a lot to say about it.
HIDER: It feels terrible to be so misunderstood. It’s not fair. I don’t want to be a part of this anymore. I’m going to leave quietly, go outside, and get some air. If someone comes looking for me—which they probably won’t…why would anyone come looking for me?—I’ll blame my bailing on the bedlam of the restaurant.
FIGHTER: What a jerk! They don’t even know what they’re talking about! The kid isn’t even looking at me! Maybe if they paid more attention to him, they’d know that! I’d be okay if I never saw them again!
RULER: Hey, not everyone can be as observant as me. That’s what makes me an amazing father. It’s a shame every parent can’t be as attentive as me. I wonder what I could say to show them what a great person I actually am. Something wise, clever, and barely passive-aggressive at all!
All three of my protectors are talking at once, so I simultaneously want to leave, scream, and pontificate. It has become very unpleasant inside of me. Outside of me, everyone has moved on. The infant is smiling again. The conversation is light. Laughter rings out. The nachos are still warm. The beer is still cold. But inside, I’ve got a big, confusing decision to make: which of these three paths do I choose?
I choose none of them.
I choose instead to be the Welcomer. In other words, I simply hold my three protectors in awareness. Instead of trying to control the outside world, I just try to abide with my inner world. I practice being instead of doing. This isn’t fun. It’s quite difficult actually. I’m a tea kettle about to whistle.
What exactly is the Welcomer who watches all of this? Is it our final self? Is it the last member of our inner gathering? Is it the biggest doll in one of those Russian nesting dolls, with the smallest doll—our Lover, our true self, our soul—buried layers inside of it?
The short answer is, no.
The Welcomer isn’t something with form—it’s the formlessness in which all other forms exist. It’s the vastness of space in which the Earth exists, it’s not simply a bigger planet. It’s not something that can be seen, because it’s the thing in you doing the seeing.
All of our wisdom traditions have a different name for this. Mindfulness. Awareness. Consciousness. The contemplative mind. And they all say essentially the same thing about it. It is mindfulness itself, not the inner chatter of which you are mindful. It is awareness itself, not the feelings of which you are aware. It is consciousness itself, not the various selves of which you are conscious. It is contemplation itself, not the things you are contemplating. The wisdom traditions usually stop there in their description of this witness consciousness. They say, “Watch your reaction to your inner events, and then let them go.”
However, the Welcomer actually goes a step further.