The Subatomic Kid and Me

I would like to be able to say The Subatomic Kid is an autobiography. I would like to, but I can’t, because it isn’t. It’s a fantasy, an adventure story that happens over a weekend, and the only adults watching are the ones that have an urge to bend the world to their will. But it is my story, the one I would have wanted to happen, the one that would prove my life up until my teens wasn’t in vain.

When you’re very young things slowly begin coming into focus the day you realize you’re a monster! It is the same face that stares back at you from a mirror every time you look deeply into one, and it’s the face of a monster. Of course, you have to stand on a box to see it because all the mirrors are set to adult height, and you’re not even supposed to be doing what you’re doing, but you’ve discovered a monster — and it’s you.

You’re exploring the only territory you know, the house you’re growing up in, and nobody suspects that you can get around quite as adroitly as you can, but you do. Like a five-year-old James Bond you are absorbing everything you see, stuffing impressions into your mind with your kid’s imagination.

For a growing kid boring stuff goes on all the time. You look forward to excitement which comes rarely or never, but when it does it’s a cause for celebration. Birthdays are a fun time, and so is Christmas. They are of course both birthdays: one is yours and the other is the world's. The world has been around much longer than you have, a lot longer, so its birthdays are huge affairs. The sun steps away for a moment and half the globe basks in winter snow. Cold places in the world are warmed; it looks and feels its best, and the universe is impressed. You on the other hand have never knowingly been here before and everything is new; you discover things moment by moment. You knew nothing before this so some things strike you as horrible and others are quite wonderful – two feelings you will become very conversant with as time goes by.

But right now, you’re still a monster! You stare aghast at the reflection; the longer you stare the more monstrous it becomes. Is it changing shape because it’s growing, or are your eyes changing its shape because of the creepy feeling it gives you, a feeling you never felt before? Oh, my, my, what’s happening? You’ve unwittingly stepped onto the roller-coaster of growing up; you are at the deepest level of your being beginning the long swim up to full consciousness. You are absorbing what you feel and see; you are creating yourself. This is the most important time of your life, the moment in which you are becoming you.

Right now, you are a subatomic kid; you are the building blocks of something very special, the future. You are a magician; if you are given love and understanding you will blossom into a fine flower, if not you will become a weed. There’s nothing wrong with being a weed, a weed just has to work harder and longer at becoming a flower. This time in your life is all about transformation, and your transformation can be easy or hard; it’s all down to your circumstances. You didn’t ask to be born but you were chosen from somewhere, it’s inexplicable that this is the only part of the story. There has to be a before and an after somewhere; there’s always a before and after. You stare at the nostrils, the mouth, the nose and the teeth. You’ve never seen anything like it before; it’s hideous, but it’s what you’re wrapped in, it’s you; so, who are you?

You’ve been given a name but you are not that, you are not a word; you are complexity itself, wrapped in more complexity so you have to find a simple way of understanding yourself. Suddenly the monster is looking less monsterish, maybe you are getting used to it. It’s as if you have never been anything solid before. Perhaps you were the exact opposite of physical reality; perhaps you were spirit and you are now learning to drive physical reality. That would explain the aversion to your own appearance, and it would explain a lot of other things. How come you know absolutely nothing about anything?

Climbing down from the box you used to peek into the corner of the mirror, you are aware that you are becoming aware. But of what? You know you are a kid because your mom is humming in the other room as she is ironing, and every day now things are becoming clearer. It’s clear; there are things you can do, and things you mustn’t do. Some things please people and some get you into trouble, but exactly what who knows? As a child you are no one, nothing; there are no thoughts to pollute your mind and infect your body. You know nothing of love because you are love born of love; everyone reacts to you with reverence and strange, singy-songy sounds. You know nothing of fear; your world is a paradise of discovery in which everything you need just shows up, and if it continues this way life is going to be a breeze.

But there is a danger here and you don’t know it, you’re inside something known as the mind, and it’s a dangerous piece of equipment. At the very moment the mind realizes it has power it will begin to corrupt you by introducing concepts that go nowhere, and you will start to get lost in thought, for the mind is the source of all deception. The seduction of thought is that it wants to take you further and further into ridiculous scenarios that are untrue. But you are a human being; you believe what you see even if you only see it in your head.

The scary stuff horrifies you, and the wonderful stuff attracts you as emotions are introduced into the dance. In many ways the thoughts in your head are the dancers; they move and they sway in the dance of life with the energy of life force, energy powered by you, the whole you, the body. Like the slow beat on a drum, you are coming together with time, you are beginning, you are being born.

Whether you are born, just waking up, or in a new body is a point of conjecture, but for sure the first two or three years of your life are purely for pooping, peeing, eating, puking, making sounds, smiling and crying. The whole super-consciousness thing hasn’t arrived yet, but when it does that’s when the magic happens. You could think of it as getting plugged in to the super-computer-universe, the all-knowledge truth of yourself, and the only thing that can hold you back from accessing everything you’ll ever need is the mind. The mind is a hornet’s nest. It thinks of itself constantly, is highly critical of others, and has no time for what it can’t control, so good luck making it through life because whether you succeed or not is going to be a crapshoot.

This is the reason we are so bothered as kids; we are in a constant battle with the mind, but the mind is a dirty fighter, the only things it is going to tell you are meant to cripple you so you will be subject to its will and not your own. Don’t get me wrong, the mind has very important tasks to fulfil; it has to run an unknown multitude of tasks just to keep you coordinated, but its other function is the lord of the ring: it is the guardian of the ego. Within yourself everything falls to the power of the ego, it is that strong. A healthy amount of the power the mind uses belongs with the will, but the mind circumvents the will with a constant barrage of failure talk which negates the possibility of you ever working out exactly what will is for.

So here you are. You are at the beginning of life’s adventure, a very important quest, the quest to make it through childhood unencumbered by shackles and chains. Nobody is ever going to tell you this; your parents can’t because they suffered their own fate when they were kids. Therefore, we have to begin to remember now so that future generations will not fall to our fate. Our quest requires that we act like warriors; a warrior uses his will to project his spirit like an arrow. His heart is sure, a warrior thinks with and trusts his heart because it will never deceive him, and a warrior lives in the moment – never in the deception of past or future.