A
Different Perspective
“The
spiritual person comes to view the world in a different perspective.
Underneath ordinary reality he or she recognizes another dimension.
At the very core of each creature, the contemplative finds an
otherness that compels him to allow it to be itself and to abstain
from the conquering, objectifying attitude we commonly adopt. This
does not reveal a new idea of God; rather, it allows reality to
reveal itself.”
Louis
Dupre (“Spiritual Life in a Secular Age”; Daedalus, Winter, 1982,
p.25)
As smart as we humans
are, it's not possible for us to keep track of everything that's
going on in the world all of the time. We have to mentally
prioritize. We do this by focusing on one thing at a time, and having
particular avenues of interest that we follow to their conclusion,
while keeping other things simmering on a back burner until we can
focus on them. We triage, so to speak. What happens is that we have
only a modicum of information and knowledge about almost everything
except the objects of our particular focus. This lack, however, does not usually keep
us from having opinions.
I can't speak for you,
but when I was younger, I had a lot more confidence (arrogance) in my
opinion of the world and its people. And, I had opinions about
everything whether or not I had the least scrap of understanding of
anything below the surface of that event, or that person's life. As I
have aged, I find myself being more of an observer, and less of a
judge. (Thank God!) I don't know much about the world, having never
traveled to most of it. But I find that the people who do travel a
lot, mostly shop and bring back stories having to do with the food
they ate, the wines they drank, and the things that dazzled their
eyes—not much about the culture, or the history, or anything else
at the deeper layers of that place or its people. They glean
impressions like a rubber stamp pressed into blotting paper—the
image, but not the reality.
As we develop
spiritually, we want to know more. We want to know the essence of a
person, or an event and not just the surface. Somehow, it becomes
easier to look at things as they are, without the need to opine,
compare, or criticize. This is one of the boons of aging, I think. As
we move from external curiosity to internal curiosity, and as we
delve deeper into our own souls, we want to engage others at that
same level. Sometimes, that engagement is not possible, but when it
is, life becomes much richer—far more complex and interesting. All
our simplistic explanations for how things are, and how they should
be become just that—simplistic. It's frustrating to accept that
there is way more that I don't know than what I do know, but it's
somehow liberating, too. It helps to remind myself that each of us is
here on the earth-plane to learn particular lessons, and everyone's
lesson is different. Cultural movements ebb and flow, and explode and
dissolve, and life changes for all of us.
Here is an excerpt from
the 1927 prose poem “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann that speaks to
this movement. It was quite pivotal in my own soul's awakening when I
was young:
“And
whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding
as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive
[God] to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy
confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham,
drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be
cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
(“Desiderata”
“desired things”)
In the Spirit,
Jane
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