Real

There seems to be an essence of who we are at birth not connected to our physical bodies or our minds. Despite our planning, our growing, our changing, and our strong identification of ourselves with these things, there is an essence that is us that goes beyond the mind and the body. A dead body is empty. Our minds, our conditioning, our habit energies can't always be trusted. "Iris" was a beautiful movie, about author Iris Murdoch who lost her academic gifts, her ability to write with the onset of Alzheimer's disease. There was someone there in her however that connected with her husband John Bayley. That's the Real part in us. Maybe when we shed our attachments to our minds and bodies, we find what is Real.

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."-- by Margery Williams, from The Velveteen Rabbit --