Oracles can seem like something right out of a Percy Jackson novel. Something fanastical, mythological, and therefore, not born of reality. Not helpful in the day to day. Not something a grown person would do. And yet, when we view an oracle as a “wise and authoritative answer,” or as a “revelation,” it all begins to take on a very different feel. For the truth is, who among us could not use a little more unerring, and dare I say, otherworldly knowledge or guidance.
This week, I heard a teacher say that as humans, when we are struggling, we go to the material world. We go to our computers, our statistics, our medications, and our distractions. We go to our fears, our insecurities, our habit patterns and our assumptions. We go to other people, and we go to the statistics. In a nutshell, we go outside of ourselves for the fix. Nowadays, that “fix” is virtually endless.
I am witnessing that right now in my own life as I all too often find myself at my inbox looking for how I get to feel about the work I have to offer the world. As if the great and mighty oracle of Hotmail will tell me whether or not I am heading in the right direction around my life’s work, around my most sacred callings, yearnings and devotions. It is all so very painful. So very, very unfulfilling, confusing, maddening and distracting. That is because I am in the wrong place.
In fact, it is actually destructively easy, “convenient,” and far too accessible for our own good to be able to push a button, get an answer and wind up in the wrong place. Interestingly enough, too often, it is not even close to the answer, as in the one we most need or is most accurate, but instead, is an answer; that whether valid or not, stands in the place of what we are seeking. Only… Have we paused to consider that what is so quick, so decisive, so seemingly real and authoritative is in fact distancing us from ourselves? Making us “instinct-injured?”* Separating us from our truest nature and with that the treasure trove of instinct, intuition and connection? Have we considered that distanced from the guidance, well-being, sovereignty, and yes, natural sacredness that is our birthright, we are in fact destroying ourselves?
It is so hard to not know. To be uncertain. To feel small and out of control. And yet. And yet. Contained in all of that is a map. A map for living right up close and personal with the Truth of who we are, and how things actually work. But it only becomes available when we are willing to see it as such. Only available when we become the strict guardians of who and what we use as our Oracle. As our ultimate Source.
Several years ago I had a student who came up with the most elegant and profound gatekeeping strategy I have ever encountered around how we use the technologies. She taped a sticky note to the back of her phone with the question, “Why am I here?”
WHY AM I HERE?
Drink that in deeply for some perspective. Are you here to be guided by what comes out of a machine? Or by Something Greater? Are you here merely to latch onto information being pushed on you, only to spew it back out again? Or do you have something of your own to say? Are you here to ping-pong back and forth between fear and false external assurances? Or are you here to discover what to put your faith in?
The questions are deep, and they are so very profound. The ones worth asking always are. And, the ones worth asking cannot be answered by another. Or by an inbox.
*Clarissa Pinkola-Estes