The Flock

With a flock comes ‘credulity’, the willingness to believe most anything on slight or uncertain evidence.

When morning comes the flock will have its back to the sunrise. Happy to continue devouring yesterday’s fodder just like it’s been done for all the days before that. Content to wallow in the uncertainty and falsehoods shared by every other member of the flock. But don’t forget the repetition!

What is the allure of a flock . . . ? Everyone sharing the same beliefs while using the same repeated rhetoric? A place where no one is challenged, where there is safety in the combined credulity!

The flock serves its purpose for many. For lifetimes, individuals adhere to the beliefs, accept the meeting times and act and respond with the ‘correct’ and accepted and necessary reply to the learned liturgy.

No harm done, but please don’t try to encourage me to become part of the play. I don’t do scripts well.

That leaves but one poignant question. What to do when . . .

someone is a member of a flock and wakes one morning and forgets to have her back to the sunrise and a blast of pure sunlight begins to bring doubts about the veracity of some of the tenets which the flock believes?

And the doubts linger. And the person comes to grips with the idea that what she has been holding on to all these years is only wishful thinking, at best. And the concept of ‘honesty’ enters her mind. She begins being brutally honest with herself because she starts to address herself as a pure individual and not as a part of some flock.

Being honest with yourself. How unimaginably beautiful a concept. And not just honest when it is convenient. But out in the middle of that field where there is not one individual in a hundred miles that shares your conviction. When personal honesty begins to penetrate that, you are on the right path.

Turn and stare into the sunrise – face to face. Take absolute responsibility for every thought you hold and every action you take. For once, be absolutely honest with yourself. Put your credulity under a microscope. Examine what is lodged in your heart.

Perhaps that perfection, that Freedom, that Infinite, is within everyone . . .

just waiting to be born.