THE WHISPER OF MEMORIES

After that the rest was simple: I acknowledged the significance of this principal lesson of my life. I raised its standing onto the very highest pedestal and freed it from the negative emotional background that had fed it, replacing, as I have already said, the meanings with one another. I entered into the image of an observer of my own self, who began to direct this whole process from the outside. As if I and the one who was considered to be me had ceased to be one whole. Severing this bond, I was able to behold the very pain that had tormented me, stirring up those same ruinous and hidden emotions through which I had been drawing all this reality to myself. Only in this way and in no other did it become possible for me to govern what lay in another dimension.

Consciousness is the only force that creates not only where it has a biological or any other material attachment, but also where it is possible simply to observe one's own iterations from the outside.

Later, applying this same mechanism to other persons who had left in my memory more or less deep and oppressive wounds that bled the soul, I was able to isolate and close all matters with them. I came to feel gratitude toward all who had in any way harmed me and made me live through negative experience. I began to understand that each such incident revealed new abilities within me and, making me stronger, granted new possibilities. By resolving them, I rose higher and used more divine energy to create something better and more magnificent. But most importantly, I came to relate differently to my mother. As if some hidden image of her as a guardian angel had shown the face of the true benefactor.

I suddenly began to recall all the pleasant events connected with my mother, at which my soul, each time, expressed the wish to shed a tear. Because all my life I had preferred not to remember them, having driven them into a dark and hopeless corner of my memory. My mother was an inexperienced and madly naive person. She came from a simple working-class family, where not much attention was paid to knowledge and good manners. But in childhood she was often hurt because of a congenital bodily defect — she was missing the hand of her left arm. This led to her growing up capricious, since at home they tried in every way to please her, fulfilling all her wishes, and along with that very suspicious of everyone, for it seemed to her that the attention of those around her was directed precisely at her. Naturally, this attention, in her opinion, was at the very least disrespectful and therefore carried an offensive subtext.

If someone had been able to explain to me back then the reasons for her behavior, I would have bestowed upon my mother all the sincere love that every child possesses. I would have valued her care for us and would have supported her in every way in any situation. But beside me there was no mentor of the kind that usually appears in beautiful novels, and I did not know what to do.

Life at times makes sharp turns, substituting the priorities and meanings of the values accepted by our consciousness. My mother voluntarily stepped over the threshold of stable family comfort, plunging into a seething, unpredictable, and uncompromising reality. Not only was she unprepared for this, but in addition she dragged us along with her.

At first this instability in a person's mind arouses anger, which imperceptibly grows into hatred toward everything that opposes you. Including toward those who feel sincere love for you, thereby granting this state full authority to occupy the central niche in your heart. Hatred is born in secret, deep in the subconscious. It has the most effective disguise our mind could devise — pain.

It is precisely pain that makes its presence possible in our hearts. And pain itself is the product of our self-flagellation. A person likes, if only periodically, to pity himself. Though he will never admit it, least of all to himself, torn between actuality and a reality invented by him alone. Pity born of one's own powerlessness, of hopelessness, and of the awareness of a bleak future makes a person weak, nervous, and hating, first and foremost, his own life. Having understood this trap constructed by life itself, I resolved to reflash my mother's worldview settings and to introduce radical changes into our relationship.

And now, after many, many years, I am trying to make up for what had seemed to be lost. In a year my mother will turn eighty; she is old, yet at the same time, however paradoxical it may appear, her thinking is passing from an unstable state into a balanced one. I talk with her a great deal about the meaning of life, about people, about God, and, listening to her pain, I point out the other side of the coin. It gladdens me that she wishes to change herself, wishes to come to know the new, the unknown. And it brings her satisfaction when she herself notices how her views change toward what until recently might have disappointed her in some way. All of this has affected me as well. My indifference, both toward my mother and toward myself, has vanished. I have once again awakened, in the depths of the crater of my heart, love toward the woman who gave me the chance to see the light of this world. And this same feeling I have managed to cultivate in my mother as well.

She has begun to look differently, with understanding, into the actions of people who know not what they do. Before, such characters could irritate her and inflict deep offense. Now, however, she looks at everything from a different angle of perception. She has learned the most important thing: she has begun to recognize the causes in people's behavior. Understanding what exactly had once prompted her to be different — irresponsible, in a hopeless waiting for deliverance from suffering. Having come to know new paths, she with difficulty, yet still, overcomes all those psychological barriers that until recently seemed to her impregnable. Which, in turn, makes my perception of her successes, in the literal sense, dazzlingly pleasant. Thus the observer's experience has helped me and continues to help me uncover new horizons of possibility in a world where miracles are able to manifest precisely where we are least drawn.

But for the time being, while I was a child, when that very indifference was slowly forming within me, my old folk came to my rescue. To me they were the best in the world — as, for that matter, they are to most who have them or have had them. My grandfather was a brave fellow. His energy made everyone rise from their seat wherever he entered, even if there were strangers to him in the room. He was taciturn, as am I, but every word of his held deep meaning, from which the soul of each interlocutor was filled with wisdom. To me he was the most faithful friend in the absence of my father. Between us there was a bond that only he and I noticed and felt. And the most important thing, from which to this day a certain inner pride, unnoticeable to those around me, still arises: neither I nor he ever boasted of it.