Our mind’s are built for us,
by the adult’s in our childhoods.
Each interaction a response to our existence:
shaping and defining our self-concept in the world.
Linguistic interactions between cognitive selves,
can be talked through and re-conditioned.
But, prelinguistic input prior to a cognitive self,
becomes neurological, physiological, epigenetic.
I – the conscious self- can not alter the architecture of the mind from which I arise,
for now, I can only flip the light switch on,
and decline,
to be led by its specters into baited-rages or panicked flight,
down recursive corridors of thinking and trauma-based reactions.
To chose, again and again,
to no longer gaze into the haunted paintings of memory,
or shamble through the long-dead graveyard of the past,
but instead through open windows
let the blessed sunlight of the lived present,
fill and flow through my inner space.
I must show up for my self, and
reclaim and restore these damp, haunted ruins,
no longer vacating through disassociation,
but accepting the ruble and destruction,
tend to the mind I inhabit and make of it
a stable and loving home.
Not a fortress or a hermitage,
but with empathy inviting in all,
a place of compassion, community, connection,
of practical wisdom, health, and love.
So that one day, clear and empty,
like a dew drop,
my mind can vanish and rest,
in the loving embrace of unity
with all of life.