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Giorgio de Chirico, The Painter's Family, 1926
Initiation destroys the self-centered world of childhood,
at least this is its primary intent. The adult produced by
initiation is a person whose self and entire life is defined
y a center outside of him or herself.
—Evan V. Zuesse, from Ritual Cosmos
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Although it may not lead automatically to maturity, I suspect that
many people would not grow up at all if they had not decided to
become parents. It is one of the key things that shatters the
eggshell of our persistent adolescent narcissism. Now that 30 is
the new 18, now that adolescence seems to be lengthening into a
several-decades-long project, having a child is one of the few
things that informs us that time is passing.
World cycles go by, whether nine or 432,000, and the sky at last
separates from the surface of the ocean. Gentle rhythmic lapping
gives way to violent peaks and troughs. The egg's inhabitant has
seen his image in the water, as the teachers from an earlier age
had informed him that he would. Quite strangely, though, now
that she has passed, with a storm of static, through the face of a
smoking mirror, now that she can study the parts of her body
from a number of different angles, what she sees looks less and
less like any image she remembers. His new body bears only a
limited resemblance to the ones from which he yesterday
departed. It does not look like a sphere, like a constellation or a
figure eight, or like any of 10,000 other forms, the last few
hundred of which are human. And now, a pair of hands have
yanked her from a tunnel. Moonlike faces float in too bright
fluorescent light. Barbarous screams have begun to echo in her
ears.
A new theatre has been prepared for its enormous central actor.
And you, the first parent there ever was, have been scheduled to
withdraw yourself. That act is over, and the shadows ask that you
should take your place among them.
Your life can then be divided into B.C. (Before Conception) and
A.D. (After Delivery). It makes little difference if you are or are
not ready, for whoever really is? You must do whatever is needed.
You must grapple with the ultimatum posed by having helped to
bring a new life into the world. In any case, becoming a parent—at
least potentially—rips your attention away from your own navel
and roots it in a center in the outside world. Your own needs
become secondary. Another's well being becomes more important
than your own. When a baby cries, it focuses your attention on the
present moment, as on the breath, in a way that is just as
demanding as the protocols of a ten-day Vipassana retreat. You
must breathe with another's breath, and the exercise is not over in
10 days, or even in 10 years!
Directly perceiving the interdependence of all things, the
Bodhisattva vows to stay on this side of Nirvana: He must find a
way to bring all creatures with him. So too, perhaps unconsciously
, parents act out an everyday version of this vow. Let us say that
we are already fully "enlightened" beings, who exist at some
indeterminate point in the future or the past, or at the still center
of a kaleidoscopic sphere. If this is true, then to put on the roles of
"parent" and "child" is a service that we have volunteered to
perform, each in his/her turn. For even the gods need navels if
they are to function on the Earth.
My sense is we exist on many levels, as do our words and our
actions, however much these levels do not appear to be related.
Our use of both the full and diminutive versions of first names
would suggest that we know a bit more than we are saying. For
example, my daughter is called "Elizabeth." Broken one way, the
name appears to come from "Eli," the abbreviation for "Elohim,"
the "active powers of god." This combines with "sheba," which
means "seven," or with "shaba," which means "oath." Thus, the
name could be translated as "God's power is an oath," or "The
powers of god are seven." Broken a different way, we could focus
on the Hebrew letter "Beth," which means "house," or, in
Kabbalistic terms, an enclosure that divides the timeless from the
manifest. Beth is the first letter in the Book of Genesis, the
"dwelling place of El." On the other hand, my daughter is
sometimes known as "Liz," which could just as easily be "Lizzy" or
"Betty" or "Betsy" (if these last two did not annoy her). Of course,
children do not name themselves at birth. There is a gulf between
what we are and what our parents call us. Our use of formal and
less formal names nonetheless points to our awareness that the
self does exist on multiple levels.
Mount Meru, Tibetan 19th century
To be born is a miracle, if a common one, perfected over an
infinite number of past versions of creation. You would almost
think that we had chosen to be here! Here, and in no other place,
for where else is there, really?
Here, to some extent awake and present, is where we find
ourselves, and are. Being grounded is not at an opposite extreme
from being spiritual, and I think that this is one of the secret gifts
of parenthood. It is, indeed, a kind of initiation, which may make
no sense to those who have not undergone the experience. Even if
you, as the new initiate, should prove obtuse, a figure eight will
return you to some version of the figure-eight. The present will
make use of you. You will probably not object too much to being
used. And if you do indeed object, too bad. Your hungry koan will
be waiting to annoy you.
You will see how you are big. You will see how you are small. You
will be able to turn your life to examine it simultaneously from all
angles, in the same way you once turned your body as an infant.
This could be seen, perhaps, as a slow-motion version of what
takes place in an NDE review. Each jump to an alternate level of
experience demands that you should turn a clear eye on past
actions. Your vision should be, in equal parts, both cold and all
-accepting. You must dare to look at those issues you have left
only half-resolved, for otherwise your shadow may attach itself to
your child. Before the child is even born, you might print him
with the scars of those who howl from their graves, of those who
yearn to crush the throats of their false rulers. You might warp
the expression of her RNA with your own out-of-focus anxieties.
You might limit her choice of seats in the high school cafeteria.
By becoming a parent, you also become a parent to yourself. As
your child grows, he/she reawakens your own sense of wonder,
which had been deactivated at the end of the previous world cycle
, when you were sentenced to first grade and the doors to the
school clanged shut. By means of looking out for another you
have once more learned to see, and you can relive all of your own
childhood discoveries and traumas, both from the inside out and
from the outside in. The present is no longer the mute victim of
the past, a landscape made from shards of broken glass that was
left by competing tribes of black magicians. No, the Earth is young
, and she is happy to parade her wealth before you. She will point
you towards the sun behind the sun, towards the tree from which
whole cultures can be picked. You will bend to lift the curled-up
husk that you left in the Satya Yuga.
Deniz Ozan-George, Shaman Persuades
the Reborn Sun to Return to the Sky, encaustic, 2023
Again, we will meet at the wish-fulfilling stone, where some but
not all requests born from necessity will be granted. There,
standing in a circle, we will meet with those we love, and there
will be none among us who are able to determine the other's age.
We will show each other our scars, laughing, as we draw lots to
project ourselves towards death. For our golden bodies were
designed to sustain much wear and tear.
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