Breaking Illusions

Painting by Howard Terpning


Joy Harjo

Breaking Illusions


One of the most loaded symbols is “Mother”.
Religions have sprung up over the holy symbolic connotations
of Mother. To be Mother is sacrosanct. Mother is sacrifice,
is love without question, is feeding even from one’s own body,
is carrying children and giving birth, is care of the hearth,
is the making of food from the gifts of the earth.
She is the ultimate creative power. Like anything a symbol
embodies its opposite. Mother out of control is supreme control
over her children. She smothers them, she demands absolute
loyalty, and she force-feeds them with guilt and food even
as she eats her children. She is destruction.

Our mothers are demigods until we sprout into our personhood,
our potential mother/fatherhood to take our place. Then,
they become essentially, biologically, rivals. Either we make
friends of our rivals, or we throw them over. Each culture
decides differently. In this larger cultural overlay
of “civilization” that has supplanted our indigenous
cultures children are encouraged to make anyone older the enemy.

And then, as we become mothers (or fathers) the story begins
again, and we make our way.

Smashing those symbols, those illusions and setting free
the people inside them can be liberating, and even so,
absolutely terrifying. Those symbols can be life preservers
in the deep, deep ocean of psychological waves and shifts.

I remember the day I decided to see my mother as a human being.
I chose to see her as a little child, growing up under
the duress of extreme poverty with a mother who didn’t know
how to love. She became a human being, someone on the path
alongside me. She was no longer a towering figure
of perfection gone wrong. I found a way to forgive her,
to forgive myself. Our relationship shifted.
It doesn’t mean that there weren’t transgressions
or failings. There were.
There are.
We are human.

Yesterday I had to face an immense illusion.
I had worked on it for years. Perfected it.
I had carefully built a symbol. I used materials of hope,
and put together a design made of how-I-thought-it-should-be,
and had hammered it together with wishes.
Hammering with wishes is like hammering with handfuls of water.
I had created someone wasn’t there.
And the someone-who-wasn’t-there was who I had imagined
interacting with me, was whom I had been relating to
all this time.

It broke, as such illusions eventually do.
What I had created was no longer there.
Instead, what stood, was a very small and raw human being,
with immense insecurities, failings and fears.

My first instinct was to defend myself, to fight.
Breath and love began leading me, first to see the illusion
I had created, then to act with integrity
even as I feel the pain.

And for me, most of all, because of my particular tests,
I had to acknowledge my knowing. Knowing is beyond
the human mind and emotional field. It has always told me
the truth. The truth can be painful beyond measure.

Mvto, knowing.

And mvto, or thank you, dawning. This morning is another day.
Each day has a soul, is a being, and loves to be acknowledged.
How beautiful you are in blue blue sky.


Joy Harjo......from her Blog site
Tuesday, January 27, 2009