Blog 2 | Innocence : Dave Gets Lost

The Growth Of Awareness Through Nurture And The Exploration Of Identity

Daveinstoke explores innocence instinctively and intuitively

Unions need nurture, constantly, cautiously, lovingly. The growth of awareness and the exploration of identity is revealed over time.

I soon find out that my newly found somethingness overflows with nurturing opportunities. I quickly forget the nothingness of before. The nothingness of instinct, the somethingness of nurture. Is there more? There were many nurturing days, but there was only one never to be forgotten nurturing day when my best mate’s eldest brother chucked me into the deep end of the swimming pool.

Nurture carries me. I cannot ignore nurture and nor can I explain it. Nurture creates me. Nurture drives my experiences. Nurture furnishes my inner nothingness with somethingness. Nurture moulds my personality. Nurture shapes my emotions.

Like everything else, nurture is progressive, it evolves, it matures. Nurture is crucial to starting the process of separation from the nothingness of before and towards the growth of becoming an individual being. Slowly I come to know things. Eventually I come to know what I do not know and cannot ever know. Beginning. Ending. Meeting. Union. Imagining.

My thirst for knowledge keeps me racing ahead long after any races finish. Nurture reveals me. The more I learn, the more I want to learn. I crave learning. I crave nurture. I crave insight. I crave awareness. Choice might well be an illusion but as long as all of us who are not lost keep wandering along the path of life and living, little by little, we move out of a life propelled by fate towards a life forged by choice.

An Awareness Of Human Limits Empowers Better Decision Making

I’m not sure I’ll ever meet a genius in the flesh, but now that the world is a lot smaller, I can at least discover them more easily online. By all accounts Einstein was a genius. “Two things are infinite:” he claimed, “the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Anyone who recognises the stupidity (or foolishness) of humans must, at the very least, be an especially perceptive and remarkable person. Stupidity is universally shared. He was certainly aware. He didn’t ignore the range of possibilities that actually exist.

Consciousness is awareness. Consciousness is problem solving. Consciousness is emotional reciprocity. The somethingness of life and living brings many gifts. One of the greatest gifts is awareness. Our unconsciousness is flooded with information and emotions, and it simmers just below the cusp of awareness ever urging us (subliminally) towards integrity and a wholeness of being, if only we notice its invisible, inaudible, relentless suggestions, leading us ever closer to a more expansive, urgent awareness.

Imagination Produces The Best Version Of Ourselves

During an interview discussing the outcomes of two scientific expeditions Einstein said, “I believe in intuitions and inspirations … Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

As experiencers of life and living, we need to distinguish between reality and imagination. We need to recognise truth. We need to imagine potential truths. We need to take what’s instinctive and natural, then nurture this with experience and knowledge, temper this with emotional awareness, transcend this with imagination – an imagination without boundaries or constraints – to produce the best version of ourselves and the world around us. Distinct genius indeed!

Clearly, the somethingness of the world asks for balance, not just hierarchy.

I learn, though, that genius does not guarantee wisdom. Wisdom does not guarantee intelligence. Intelligence does not guarantee knowledge. Knowledge does not guarantee understanding. Understanding does not guarantee awareness. Awareness, however, does guarantee the end of innocence and enables us to see beyond our immediate world into an emerging reality of infinite imagination.

By Understanding Ourselves We Reveal Ourselves To The World

Instinct grounds me. Nurture reveals me. The dusk of innocence is the dawn of awareness. The growth of awareness and the exploration of identity reveal us to the world.

Sometime during the night before that never to be forgotten day when my best mate’s eldest brother chucked me into the deep end of the swimming pool, I woke suddenly from yet another nightmare.

Just recently my ideas that became thoughts that became stories that became bigger stories that became worries that became dreams that became nightmares all seemed to feature water. Before I knew it, my mind was churning with thoughts of being sucked down through a jagged, watery vortex into a siren pool of mermaids and mermen all thrashing and swirling chaotically as they are guarded by a raging, hungry beast ready for fresh, tasty prey.

I used to have lots of nightmares until my parents repeatedly assured me that rugs can’t suddenly take off and fly, or that dragons do not really live in Wales or that ivy cannot grow as fast as lightning, strangle all the limbs of your body within less than fifteen seconds and abandon you to the harsh, fatalistic rigours of nature. Our house had a lot of patience. There were no end of stories (and worries). There were no end of assurances.

So, on that never to be forgotten day when my best mate’s eldest brother chucked me into the deep end of the swimming pool, I found myself reluctantly standing in my trunks next to a swimming pool full of water not knowing what I should do. Why can’t consciousness be more like nature? I wondered as I stood there, waiting.

Awareness Of The World Enables Us To Make Better Decisions

Ask any cell in my body what to do next and it already knows. Each cell knows exactly what to do. Each cell knows me better than I know myself. The instruction manual for my entire self is contained within each and every cell. Nature is pre-programmed, nurture isn’t.

Nature doesn’t have to just stand there wondering, waiting, it just gets on with it. Do I have to tell my eyes when to blink or when to cry? Do I have to tell my ears when to hear or when to not hear? Do I have to tell my heart when to beat and when to not beat? Do I have to tell all the chemicals in my body what to do and where to go? No, I do not, not usually anyway. So, why am I standing here not knowing what to do! Here I am with my body (naturally) doing millions of things all at once and my consciousness can’t even make one clear decision.

Just as I start to get a little bit cross as well as a lot impatient, I realise, too late, that my best mate’s eldest brother has been creeping up behind me. Suddenly, he grabs me and hurls me through the air, towards the middle of the pool. Now, I’m finding myself falling, ready to smash down straight into the water below.

My best mate’s eldest brother has a habit of doing things like this. He’s big, strong and scary, but everyone else thinks he’s kind and lovely. I think he’s as lovely as I imagine a pet scorpion would be, and as troublesome as a tickly cough is, but on a good day he seems to make most other people smile, so that’s okay enough for me. He drives like a lunatic, just as many people did before speed cameras were invented. His car is tiny, smelly, dirty and old. His car is also grey, though this was in the days before grey became fashionable.

On that never to be forgotten day when my best mate’s eldest brother chucked me into the deep end of the swimming pool, I had reluctantly promised to go swimming with my best mate. I am still trying to fathom how to fasten the seat belt as my best mate’s eldest brother begins yanking up the dodgy handbrake so he can spin his car into a parking spot. He yells at us both, ‘Come on twinkletoes’. He slams his door shut and heads towards the entrance. Silently, my best mate and I look at each other, smile, grab our bags and run to catch up. He never bothers to lock his car. He often says, ‘Would you nick that?’

That’s how I find myself ending up falling, ready to smash down straight into the water below. He hasn’t given me enough time to prepare though. All too soon I imagine I am about to implode as I collide with the surface of the pool, and I fear the worse for myself. I expect to imminently return to nothingness.

Learning From Experiences Helps Us To Make Successful Choices

After the surprise at not being dead begins to dissipate and electrifies me more alive than I was before, I frenetically shoot up to the surface to breathe in huge quantities of air and even greater quantities of water. I soon flay around pathetically too. All out of breath, flustered, bothered, red faced and exhausted, I yell out (much more confidently than usual) to my best mate’s eldest brother as he looks down at me clinging precariously, ‘Hey. I can’t swim!’

‘What you chattin about, little fella? How’d yer get from over there where I chucked yer to over here if yer know not how to swim?’ I think about bursting into tears right there and then and I quiveringly almost do, but as usual he is right. My fears amount to nothing. He just shrugs it off anyway. And with that he dives in himself soaking me with water. I nearly cry again. Instead, I decide I should finally add swimming as another string to my bow and I tentatively try to replicate my success, less haphazardly and a lot more methodically this time, along the edge of the pool towards the shallow end.

To be fair, the nightmare was a lot more scary than the nearly drowning part, and the moment when I shout at my best mate’s eldest brother was a lot less scary than all those other times when I have to pluck up the courage to just talk to him.

While my best mate’s eldest brother messes about with my best mate, splashing and laughing with a ball in the deep end of the pool, I secretly celebrate my success and congratulate myself with pride. Did they plan this genius moment? Are moments of genius even planned or do they just happen? Nurture did play a disguised role in this curious escapade even though imagination featured.

When we only act out of instinct or habit we suppress authentic freedom and ignore the imaginative scope of possibilities that actually do exist. We restrict ourselves. We limit ourselves. We remain firmly stuck in our comfort zones. We can find different ways of dealing with life and living by breaking ourselves free, by taking ownership for choices and change, according to need, and by not restricting ourselves with irresponsible conventions or obsessive, oppressive order.

We Make Better Choices By Imaginatively Extending The Range Of Possibilities Life Offers

The delicate balance between sustainable resilience and resolute success that we each desire is formed and moderated during the compulsive dance of destiny between hesitant aspirations, intuitive instincts, nurturing experiences and imaginative choices. They coalesce willingly to reveal the best version of ourselves, where the visible and the invisible merge as one.

The somethingness of life and living invites us to make choices as participants, not merely observers, and these choices impact on the impressions of ourselves that we wish to radiate to others. Do we break all the rules of chemistry and laws of physics as water does, or do we emulate the dependability of a worker ant? Do our senses, ever nurtured by choice and experience, elicit meaning from the blank (or clean) slates of our existence, or are there sophisticated chemical and physical negotiations taking place that are beyond our control? Who is identifying need? Who is deciding order?

Life and living is less predetermined than it could be (and used to be). Choices steer us. Choices challenge us. The security of instinct can be hard to break free from, nevertheless nurture invites us to catch glimpses of our future selves. Sometimes, we can be overwhelmed by choice. Too much choice limits our awareness and causes oversights due to us not acknowledging vital clues. These missing, crucial clues keep feelings and thoughts that ought to be confronted below the threshold of awareness so as to appease the howling heart of respectable conformity.

The ongoing battle between the visible and the invisible becomes overwhelming. What do I choose, what do I set aside? What is chosen for me? What is discarded for me? Who decides need? Who decides order? I struggle. I am confused. I lose direction. Choices are too overwhelming. Decisiveness is elusive. Getting lost is easier than feeling whole.

Nevertheless, I now know that truth triumphs and integrity reigns only when we break through the barriers of weakness and doubt to gain awareness. Once conquered, through the delicate balance between instinct, nurture and imagination, awareness of our emerging potential then invites us to take control and become agents of our own destiny.

The rewards of living invite us to seesaw between nurture and imagination, as the unique jigsaw of life’s big picture emerges piece by piece.

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