softening
March 26, 2009So often, we think we have this tight grip on Reality – we think we know the Truth. But what we really have is just a tiny slice of the Reality pie. Often (if not always), our perception is skewed and our version of reality is twisted and tangled up with our faulty beliefs and warped understanding. Maybe we’re broken in spots, damaged by the world and this mangles our perception. Or maybe we haven’t evolved enough in an area to have clear insight, so that our vision is cloudy and faulty.
Whatever the reasons for our lack of insight and our inability to focus on a truer version of reality – the problem is made much worse by our relentless grasping of these warped realities. We hold on to our view with a fierce protectiveness that surely must be born of fear. This rigidity keeps us from seeing things in a fresh way. It prevents us from being transformed by a new revelation of reality. We cling to the truth as we perceive it and this blinds us to the visions of reality that the Universe is trying to reveal to us.
Jesus the Christ advised coming to spiritual matters like a child. Consider how a child responds to the world. She runs into a field of flowers in wonder and amazement, rolling around in their scent, gazing up at the changing clouds in wide-eyed awe and deep curiosity. Compare the adult, who sees the same field and the same sky but clicks off what he knows of this reality, “The field, the flowers, the clouds too light for rain.. I know all about these, nothing new here.”
If only we would approach life and all it brings to us with a sense of curiosity and wonder, as a child. If we soften our eyes, our minds and our hearts and stop clinging to what we think we already know, what amazing things life will then set before us! Perhaps She will set before us just that thing we need to grow in love, compassion and wisdom.
We can sit for hours and days trying to sort it all out, to figure the nature of reality and the meaning of it all and fail again and again because we “see through a glass darkly”. But let us release our grip on what we think we know for a moment…let us soften our relationship with what life brings to us and approach it all with curiosity and openness — and the Universe will change us in an instant of insight!
May I become childlike, curious, open and soft. May I remember that my understanding is limited and my perception flawed. May I remember that there is not just one fixed Reality, one Truth carved in stone; but rather layers of reality that are accessible to me, if only I can open to them. Whatever hard surface of reality may present itself – it is only a single facet of the whole. When I stay soft, open and curious I can look above, below and around this version of reality and find new worlds, new possibilities and new truths.
May I savor the particular circumstances in which I find myself – not pushing life away if it doesn’t agree with what I think I already know. And may I open myself to the vast reservoir of possibility that always waits for me, ready to be dived into if I release my fear and resignation.
Namaste.
this is beautifully written and expressed… and with lovely photography too…
your post brings to mind the blind men and the elephant story, told in different ways by different people… here is one version:
“A community of blind men once heard that an extraordinary beast called an elephant had been brought into the country. Since they did not know what it looked like and had never heard its name, they resolved to obtain a picture, and the knowledge they desired, by feeling the beast – the only possibility that was open to them! They went in search of the elephant, and when they had found it, they felt its body. One touched its leg, the other a tusk, the third an ear, and in the belief that they now knew the elephant, they returned home. But when they were questioned by the other blind men, their answers differed. The one who had felt the leg maintained that the elephant was nothing other than a pillar, extremely rough to the touch, and yet strangely soft. The one who had caught hold of the tusk denied this and described the elephant as, hard and smooth, with nothing soft or rough about it, more over the beast was by no means as stout as a pillar, but rather had the shape of a post ['amud]. The third, who had held the ear in his hands, spoke: “By my faith, it is both soft and rough.” Thus he agreed with one of the others, but went on to say: Nevertheless, it is neither like a post nor a pillar, but like a broad, thick piece of leather.” Each was right in a certain sense, since each of them communicated that part of the elephant he had comprehended, but none was able describe the elephant as it really was; for all three of them were unable to comprehend the entire form of the elephant.”