Told to Forget

This one came to me in a dream.

I shared a moment with my younger brother: like when we were kids, we rolled down an expansive grassy hill, the grass soft to the touch, vibrant in its green.

As we laid at the bottom, I told him I wanted to name "our spot." In response, he said to me: "You don't need to do that, and you will forget." Jokingly, I named it "Forgetfull Hill."

Awake, maybe two hours later, as I sat journaling, I felt a wave of emotion — that sweet, special feeling when a thought enters your mind. Like an experience once lived, I could recall the grassy hill, amongst all else.

In my conscious awakeness, with the ability to interpret my subconscious colloquy, I began to ponder the sentence: why would I tell myself that "I would forget" if I named the spot on the hill?

My phanta, in the form of my brother, said "You will forget" — the rest left for interpretation. Instead of warning me I would forget the name (quite the opposite), I wonder if the warning was that with an established name, with a claim of proprietorship, I would be led to forget who I truly am.

In my dream, I wanted this idyllic place to be "mine and my brother's spot." While not malicious in intent, this mindset carries implicit risks. Once something is "claimed," or "possessed," one feels a desire to protect what they've claimed. My emotional response in the dream did not take this into account, but say, wouldn't I care if someone else claimed this spot as theirs? With an adopted egotistical, individualistic mindset, I would imagine so.

The majority of humans, myself included, desire, even infatuated with the concept of ownership*. From my understanding, this is actually a part of human (and animalistic) nature. However, while animals claim ownership for survival, humans often claim ownership based on the narrative they've spun around having it. This is what our ego strives to accomplish: an establishment of "I," "you," "mine," "yours."

Instead of listening to this belief that is taught to us from a young age, I am a fond believer that humanity is an embodiment of the universe, of oneness, of collective peace and harmony. In my exploration of spirituality and philosophy, I have come to understand that our higher selves, devoid of ego, insecurity, jealousy, and notably individualism, understand that this is not what humanity is. We are not divided. This paradigm is challenging to interpret, understand, and ultimately live. I suspect it is deliberate that many have either never learned, forgotten, and even scorned this notion.

Division leads to a weak state, and on an individual level, a weak mind — unreliability, poor decision-making, close-mindedness, and ultimately sadness. But how can you tell people: division is a choice, and … guide them to not choose that? While I could describe the various symptoms of division, I am most interested in the cause, only to cultivate a better future for humanity.

At this moment, my plea is to remember. To remember that humanity is one — that we are not divided. We embody a collective spirit, a common species. A source of energy and life. Remind yourself — underneath this lives something older and less divided.

Humans come into this earth having nothing, and leave with naught. What we call ours — our community, our possessions — comes to represent identity, and ultimately ego. This is okay, but we are more than this.

I struggle with this truth every single day. I find it while standing at the bottom of a hill that was never mine to name. But sometimes it comes in a dream.

A note: The meaning I've drawn from this dream is my own – shaped by my education, my experiences, and, admittedly, my own ego. The act of writing this is not exempt from what it describes. To publish a perspective is, in some sense, to claim one. I offer this without claiming to have escaped it.