Your True Secret Life
I watched an updated version of the film: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty the other night which is very loosely based on an original short story by James Thurber.
I haven’t seen the earlier versions or read the original short story but this film had a profoundly important deeper message. It is, in its essence, the classical Hero’s Journey story a phrase originally coined by Joseph Campbell who studied cultural stories from around the world and realised that they all basically followed the same pattern. Our lives are the same.
There are a number of steps Campbell identified in the full analysis but a useful summary in three steps is: Initiation, an ordeal to be passed through and re-birthed from and the triumphant return.
Without giving the story away you may already know that Mitty has daydreams of superhero deeds whilst out and about in daily life but his actual life is really mundane and fearful.
Most of us have experienced this to one degree or another. Certainly the fearful, certainly the mundane and occasional dreams of a higher but seemingly unattainable version of ourselves. Sometimes that version is briefly touched and then it disappears like a will o’ the wisp.
That Secret Life of the higher version of you, indeed one that is beyond your wildest imaginings, is actually your TRUTH.
It is your Infinite Truth and you are indeed beyond any superhero status. You are the creator, the experiencer and the experience in a grand collaboration with your SELF.
Like Mitty you may daydream about it, you may even be totally unaware of it being instead focussed on a much smaller version of yourself and totally believing in that.
You may look outside of yourself to other people and things for love, completion and joy. At worst you may not even consider these things possible for you.
There is great news:
This beyond your wildest imaginings, secret version of yourself is actually that which you already are!
Amazing I know but true.
It’s not about believing me on this. It’s about allowing this truth to unfold in you.
To allow this to happen you will have to let go of all that you think you are. Stop believing a myth about yourself that is so astonishingly limited. Let go of your attachment to things and people.
Instead open to the connection to truth.
Now from the space of the mind this sounds difficult. Indeed that which we call mind which is the same as ego actually fears the realisation of your truth.
It fears it because it will mean its demise. It will try to protect you, small you from this realisation in every way conceivable. The letting go involves the letting go of its projected limitations and fears.
It will be an allowing of the grace of truth to melt all that limitation away.
It will not be your doing but your allowing.
It is not complex. It is profoundly simple. For you are already it!
Look within and you will see you are not without.
The heros journey will be complete.
The initiation was the listening to your hearts calling.
The ordeal to passed through and re-birthed from is only an ordeal from the space of mind to the heart it is a great joy. The rebirth is back to your true self.
The triumphant return is the full acceptance, embracing and living of that truth.
Then your Secret Life, that which you have kept hidden even from yourself will be revealed!
It is YOU.
Blessings as Infinite Silence,
Philip
