Yesterday my teacher said something that I can’t seem to shake. It was in the course of an ordinary conversation and not a teaching per se, but that’s how you know your teacher: he or she says something that sticks with you like a needle under your skin, and it works its way in.

He said, “I knew you before you were a victim.” He wasn’t talking about me, but he might as well have been. As is the custom in a lineage tradition like mine, I can only repeat what my teacher has told me. So I will.

I knew you before you were a victim,
before you were a wreck, a mess, and a bomb.
Without a crowning success or crippling failure.
Before you had an issue, an axe, or a cross.
No disorder, no syndrome, no label –
undiagnosed,
without a blemish or scar.
Before that night and the morning after,
before the after and before the before.
Before the fall, the crash, the crime,
without an upgrade or makeover.
Version 0.0
No story,
no narration, no closed captioning,
no footnotes and no bonus features,
before you remembered to forget and forgot to remember.
I knew you before you were what you say –
what you think, what you fear, what you know.

Do you know yourself before?

I read this on FB and boy did it make me sit back and take pause to really think about me......the real me.

Labels: Before you were a vicitm.....