Branches
_AM: Are you sure of the path you have chosen?
_I: Which way?
_AM: The one you follow in your life. Do you think it is the right way?
_I: Is there a right way?
_AM: No. But the paths are correct when you have chosen them.
_I: Did I choose it?
_AM: Aha! Do you think someone else chose this path for you?
_I: I think I had no choice... That what I do goes beyond my choice, because I am flowing in it, surprising myself, discovering what I supposedly chose.
_AM: So what's your answer?
_I: I could tell you that yes, this is the right path, and yet, I would be lying to you.
_AM: Doubts, right?
_I: Yes... I doubt... I feel like the book I wrote about that parallel reality in which I die at 87 years of age feeling that I failed in life for not choosing the right path. Supposedly, what I am living now is the correct path to fulfill my mission, but even so, I am not sure.
_AM: First of all… What is the Camino for you?
_I: My paternal last name means Camino in Basque (“Bide”, bidea= the path), and for me I think that, since I learned this, it defined my life as the Camino. For me, the path is life, step by step, it is building on discovery, on the journey.
_AM: Justly Camino comes from the Celtic “cammin” (Cam = step), that is: place where steps are taken. The same happens for the English “Path”, coming from the Indo-European “pent” = step. Each step builds a path, but it has many forks, which take us to unexpected destinations. And each path emerges from a greater path. You can see roads as streams flowing into a river, or as a river opening into many streams in a delta flowing into the sea. Each stream has a name, it runs through a unique territory, it lives a personal experience, but its waters are the same as those of other streams and rivers, they come from the same place. Thus, the changes that occur in said stretch are relative to your life and experience, but what drives the flow comes from much further back, affecting everyone equally.
_I: As if every step the major river takes affects the neighboring rivers or emerging streams...
_AM: And vice versa, in that all the streams in their individuality can modify the river. So... The path goes beyond your own steps.
_I: The Path is Everything…
_AM: The steps of each individual, the choices, decisions, attitudes, emotions, traumas, intentions of each person in history and in your family tree, mark the pulse and flow of the waters that design your path. But when they come to you, it is you who decides in which direction you will move that force, it is your path, your own intention that channels the general current.
_I: Like the branches of a tree searching for the light.
_AM: When you look at a tree, it is a clear example of the paths that trace your existence. For this reason, they call the generations as a Family Tree, that is, a tree related to the origins (gene). Let us consider, then, the two visions of this tree. In the Beginning, everything is one reality, the Unity, embodied in the Trunk of the Tree. From this arises the positive and negative duality, Time and Space, opening into 2 primordial branches. They split again into 2 or 3 as appropriate, and the circuit continues, causing a single being to expand into millions towards infinity. The objective of branching is clear: to find more light. The greater the branching, the more options to obtain light at different times, from dawn to dusk passing through all the stages. Branching is a path of enlightenment, in which the greater the number of particles, diversity, of individuals living different realities from different points of view, the greater opportunities the Tree will have to generate energy and therefore nourish itself to create fruits and thus distribute new seeds.
_I: The branches become laws, dimensions, galaxies, worlds, species... individuals... Since each tiny twig is a chemical element of the periodic table, and more... Even particles.
_AM: The Tree of Life. And then, from those individuals, the reverse path towards fractal integration begins. Millions of individuals that join together in pairs, creating a new one, which joins with another to have a new baby, and so on constantly until you reach the 4 branches of your grandparents, the 2 branches of your parents, and the trunk that is you. .
_I: …back to the unit…
_AM: Although, you will be the branch of a new tree. Your path is just one step on the great Path.
_I: So, I can't say that I chose my path...
_AM: You can say that you decide how to carry out the flow you receive from something much larger. The Tree is one, no matter how much you can name its branches and flowers, its fruits and seeds or roots, they are all part of the same being, in the same way that you can name the parts of your body, and even so they will all make up to the being called Matías. You are a branch with a name and surname, a branch that is not separated from the whole, that is a natural part of a whole, and that sap, glucose, sugars, water travel through the entire plant, but this branch chooses the form, the direction in which it will take this potential.
_I: That is to say, the I never actually chooses the Path, but it can trace paths within it so that the general information passes through it and makes the flow more flexible.
_AM: Exactly. This is how the parts constitute the One. Now, knowing this, you will be able to understand that everything that you carry on your path is unconscious to you.
_I: What things?
_AM: Love, wisdom, will, relationships, intentions, search, desires, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, gifts, all of this comes from the sap of the plant, the inner product generated by each individual. in the Tree through his own search for light. All protected in the internal memories of the Unconscious. Which leads the being to act in one way or another, to follow the current that flows through the branches of the tree.
_I: So, in most cases, I am not the owner of what I do, what I feel, what I produce...
_AM: Aham… Well, the “I” is nothing more than a small fraction of a much greater I. But you can decide where to go with it, what to do with what you have inherited. The human problem is to consider oneself an individual alone and separated from the rest, as if his decisions and attitudes had no relationship with other humans. This gives them a sense of Freedom and a false appearance of Free Will, as if they had nothing to do with what precedes them and what comes after them. This makes them individualistic, eliminating all ability to react to life's circumstances.
_I: Sure… Everything we do is a consequence…
_AM: And separation converts those consequences into Unconscious attitudes. The things that you think you choose, that you think you like, that you think you have determined for yourself from total freedom, are usually not free, but conditioned by the flow of the Tree. That's why I ask _I: Are you sure of the Path you have chosen?
_I: Sometimes not. Sometimes I think the path I took is nothing more than conditioning from my past to finish stories that perhaps I would have done differently. But then I see how perfectly they unfold, and I say to myself: well, maybe the universe really wants me to do this...
_AM: What do you think is your path?
_I: Honestly… I don't know. Coming to the end of the Path of Consciousness that I have decided to travel this year, I have less idea of my path than when I started it.
_AM: Why do you think that?
_I: Because I was discovering many things about myself, I was transforming, and I realized that the paths that I am tracing in my life are not mine... What you just explained is happening to me, I can see how the Unconscious leads me to do things a path that perhaps as an individual I do not want.
_AM: Which way?
_I: The Spiritual Path and the Political Path. Both are paths I wish to pursue for others, not for myself. Both are paths of service to others, in which, no matter how much I transform as I travel along them, obviously, they are still projects and paths dedicated to others.
_AM: Tell me about your Spiritual path.
_I: My Italian family was Catholic, but not practicing. My grandfather was agnostic, like his other brothers, and some were religious, but they hated the church. I never had a family connection with the spiritual, it was my own thing. However, what I notice every day is that I am ashamed of being spiritual.
_AM: Aha, why?
_I: I feel that doing what I do is like going against my entire clan... Atheists, agnostics, non-practitioners, science readers. Sometimes I feel ashamed to consider myself spiritual, and therefore I try to cover my nature with science.
_AM: Neither the spiritual nor the scientific are absolute truths, both transform and nourish each other, they are branches on the same tree. Do not belittle the search for the spiritual through science. However, it is good that you recognize that you do not do it of your own free will, but out of fear of being rejected by the clan.
_I: Yes… This is like something very strong that I just realized.
_AM: And your Political path?
_I: Well… In my family there were very annihilating phrases about it. Everyone said: “We are nothing” and followed by “What a shit country”. In my Argentine family, politics was not talked about. My grandfather hated politics, and I never heard of anything. My grandmother told me that some of my grandfather's brothers were Peronists, but for convenience, and the rest did not have a specific ideology, or I never really understood. Even though my grandfather's thoughts were very right-wing, almost fascist, he never talked about it at home, he never mentioned these ideas. I grew up in an environment without politics and without spirituality.
_AM: And they are the two paths that you came to follow…
_I: And two paths that I flatly deny. I can understand that my branch seeks to make a change in the way of receiving light and bringing clarity to the tree, extending to a space that it had not previously traveled, and yet, in my unconscious, lies the denial of these issues.
_AM: Not everything is always so linear. The pulse is not always identical, that is, if your family was a salesperson, you will be a salesperson. Sometimes you experience something completely opposite, but the unconscious essence is the same, and you cannot understand why you find conflicts on your path if you have "transcended" that of your family. It is hidden, out of sight of the conscious, determining how you feel in your steps, and what you choose in it.
_I: Do I have to free myself from this?
_AM: Do you want to free yourself?
_I: I do not know…
_AM: A branch can break, fall, and create a new tree, but that implies a “great break”, a terrible crisis in which a lot of effort is required to initiate new paths of development, to put down new roots. It takes time, involves a lot of healing and risks. But it is possible. It all depends on if it is what you want. But you can also see it in the most natural way... That is, knowing that everything you inherit is not bad, but fuel, it is the sap that nourishes you, and that if you use it consciously, it can lead you to create new and powerful transcendental fruits. to those of previous generations.
_I: Find a new way to bring this to light…
_AM: The tree is very big… And you bring many stories from thousands of years ago. Your past lives are part of your historical tree. The conditions of those lives have drawn the maps of your paths. And you choose it again and again. Do you do it, then, from freedom or from the weight of inheritance?
_I: It is… An inheritance, of guilt, of responsibility… I feel a mandate on me that “I myself” have imposed on myself with different bodies, in different branches of history. I look ahead and would like to be free from it, but nevertheless, I am afraid of freedom.
_AM: Oh, good point. Why do you fear freedom?
_I: Because freedom separates me from everyone, it leaves me alone.
_AM: Freedom frees us from chains, from ropes, and the first chains that build us are those of DNA. To free oneself, then, is to break with the connection of those who build us, of our ancestors. It is ending the inheritance that made us what we are. Cutting off freedom separates us from the clan, and leaves us defenseless. Seeking freedom prevents us from having any type of relationship or bond, since in exchange there is an inevitable dependence, mental, emotional or physical. The human seeks freedom, however he fears it with each of his cells, because real freedom is only found in death. Free, comes from “leudh” which means “to grow”, “to expand”. In English, “Free” comes from “pri”, meaning love, sweetness, something desirable. Every human seeks to grow and expand in love, to fulfill their desires, however, many times those desires and expansion go against what family and culture establish. That is why we fear real freedom, of being left alone, exiled from those we love, and for this, we turn love and growing into a prison full of links, of branches linked to each other, depending on each other.
_I: There is no escape, well…
_AM: Well... You can think that there is none, and suffer from the fact of being connected to others, or transform this idea by saying that you are one with others, and enjoy expanding what you all produce. Perhaps the mission of each one is like that of a branch, to extend, to grow for love of the light, to inspire it to produce the best food for the Tree, freeing it from the shadows.
_I: So, being part of this linked connectivity, I can still expand and go very far...
_AM: The other branches do nothing but support you so that you do not break in the search for light. Those branches that you think hold you back are nothing more than firm pillars that prevent you from falling and having to start from scratch for yourself, putting in the effort that others have already made for you. You understand?
_I: Oh, now I see it... That search for freedom, to be for ourselves, is what prevents us from seeing that precisely the things we inherit from others are what sustain us so that we can expand our love and thus take it with us to them... If I expand towards the light, the love that I live will be the one that nourishes the entire Tree through each branch...
_AM: For you are one with them. You are the tree.
_I: I honor, then, my ancestors. I honor my mother for overprotecting me, because that is the only way I have come this far. I honor my father for abandoning me, because only in this way have I achieved what I did in my life. I honor my grandmother for giving me her righteousness, because she has given me strength. I honor my grandfather for his silences and voids that gave me freedom of thought. I honor the De Stefano – Destéfano clan for giving me their distance in politics and religion, so that I can freely build a new society and spirituality. I honor the Bide clan for not having been in my life, and thus leaving me room to grow taller towards the light. I honor the Unconsciousness that has led me to carry out this Path of Consciousness.
_AM: You are free when you recognize that the branches from which you come do not hold you to the tree, but rather support you so that you can expand towards the light. Love, then, each bond.
_I: I Am the one who Vibrates in each of the Connections.
_AM: Have you chosen your Path well?
_I: No… I haven't chosen it. For I am the Way.
_AM: Walk, then... Extend your arms, your branches, supported by others, supporting those who will come... Step by step towards the light.