There is a way that we live that is in duality. Our lives are the home of the Freudian slip and the body language betrayal. Sometimes our words and actions are even more fragmented and complex than that. But, mostly, we are always trying to balance our inner dialogues in such a way as to not topple over, blunder and fall as we make our way through our lives. Most of us have a public self and a private self. The gap used to be wider between the two and a person could go through their entire life never even bumping into their inner voice or an alter ego. At least not long enough to have a debate or deliberate over things. One just ignored a "private" thought, opinion or white lie. There was enough personal time and space to accommodate ignoring these things.
The existence of our duality and personal hypocrisy is not so easy to avoid anymore. I'm not quite sure how it happened. Perhaps it was when we entered cyber space and it entered us in relationship but the world and our personal spaces have shrunk. Consequently our relationship to our inner voice has quickened and it is now sometimes quite noisy. Developing a relationship to the self - or this inner voice - is now rather urgent if a person wants to have room within to be fully present and to prosper. To try and ignore it now can result in a great deal of denial, dramatic acting out, and/or some serious medications.
With our phones and internet gadgets listening to us even at home and cameras in everyone's pocket, on every corner and in every mercantile this ability to remain hidden from ourselves and the world becomes a fools errand. Absolute privacy is not going to happen unless one moves away from all social and cultural engagements. In the real world the private life spills out and either with a slip of the tongue or an ignorant statement made with our guard down, we are going to be revealed and possibly confronted with answering to these thoughts and feelings we like to keep so tidy and hidden away.
Hafiz is stepping up here to invite relationship where we can keep our inner house and affairs by letting the private and the public exist and cohabit without shame or retribution because, he reminds us that, "No one does not lift a great pack" . In other words there is great weight to both of these parts of ourselves that we are constantly attending to and no one is exempt from answering to how we carry ourselves through our lives. There is room enough for love, industry and compassion when there is sincere caring and communication of our personal identity even in a tiny body if we stop accommodating so much shade by hiding ourselves away and adding to our burdens.
Thank you for listening.
https://pixabay.com/music/mystery-islamic-way-109185/
Music: Franz Ferdinand's album Always Ascending is one I listened to a lot when I was writing my book as it was in serious rotation for me at that time. This song, The Academy Award talks about how we are revealing ourselves all the time in ways we never used to even consider. We are acting and often driving an even bigger wedge between our public and private selves in some ways and alternately revealing our more private selves more dramatically, almost by accident. These are interesting and challenging times requiring that we demand more honesty from others while also needing to turn to ourselves with an inward, discerning eye.
Painting: the Two Fridas by Frida Kahlo
video by Ivonne Fernandez
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here. Also, my thoughts on this series a year into these poems, HERE.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.