Monday, August 28, 2023
The first 60 seconds of a newborn’s life is called “The Golden Minute.” It’s that sacred period of time where the obstetrician and parents wait patiently for baby’s first breath. The tiny air sacs in the lungs inflate for the very first time, and then the anticipated scream comes. This cry, while jolting for baby, is music to mother’s ears! What a shock, your world suddenly ignited before you, and those initial moments were simply just a little jolt to awaken you. But it wouldn’t be the last time you’d be startled or pushed around like that. It was all nature’s way of waking you up, and that’s a process that goes into adulthood.
These moments of friction, like being pushed out of the womb are very interesting points of contact by the universe. It’s like it’s plucking its own string to create a vibration, an illusion of more than one. When a string vibrates, it seems to produce two, but two is an illusion.
Life pushes us around. Let’s say it keeps plucking that string until you finally get that you’re not a separate self, but just an illusion. If you don’t pay attention, it seems to get worse. But the first time that happened, in the Golden Minute, “you,” the aware entity you are now, was mysteriously absent. You were alive, fully conscious but not able to make sense of your new world. You have no memory of age 0-3. You may think you are the controlling agency in that body of yours, but think of the billions of processes going on in you that are involuntary, including infanthood. Think of the other moments you missed, being “lost” in thought. You’re alive but not in control. Something fishy is going on. The separate self is an illusion. It appears to come and go. Shouldn’t we be suspicious of something so wobbly?