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Monthly Archives: February 2024
Prism or Prison
Where does your attention go? Out there to see the occasional happy rainbow of experience, surrounded by the possibility of grey and darkness?
Turn around and let the Source, or presence, turn the lens into a prism, coloring everything in experience. To let the light in, you have to pay attention to it. Light glows brightly when you attend to it.
A diagram is helpful, but it’s not enough. Like an inhabitant of Plato’s Cave, turn towards the light rather than reacting to shadows on the wall. Is your perception true? Is it a world imprisoned by and through a glass darkly; a world of shadows? Or is it shot through a prism, a colorful refraction of the light within; darkness dispelled? You cannot serve two masters. Pay attention to the light, the Source of illumination. Check it out, over and over, like a lover.
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The Lens
Pay attention to the lens (yellow line) through which you perceive/limit life. It makes the difference between what you think is happening and who you think you are. You are the white blank zone creating a world of colors and feelings. The light is within. Suffering is inevitable on the experience side. Decide accordingly.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference“. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
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Miracles
Lately, there’s been a kind of crisis going on here. Doesn’t matter what it is, but suffice it to say when something seems seriously wrong there is an extreme narrowing of vision. A miracle is a shift in perception, an opening of that constricted capacity to see. As defined by A Course in Miracles:
“A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to truth.” ~ A Course in Miracles
And in the midst of that crisis, at least 3 miracles happened, and they had nothing to do with the crisis itself, but with a whole new way of seeing and being. One of those miracles was from the most worldly source–the Grammy Awards show. Seeing Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman perform “Fast Car” destroyed so many boundaries, and crossed so many divides, that I know I was not the only one who got choked up watching the two of them sing that song. “Fast Car” drove straight across often seriously polarized lanes of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and generations–and since it was the Grammys, one has to mention–and otherwise fractionalized genres.
“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
That was a miracle that cut through so many strange distortions.
Another miracle was a dinner invitation I received from a neighbor. I didn’t really want to go–crisis, you know, gotta stay tense and focused. My neighbor is a Catholic missionary, a consecrated woman, as she refers to her station in life, who works with the homeless in Denver. For her sake and mine, I won’t go into details, but this one, this miracle of sight, blasted away any pretense of division between secular and sacred, and of anything I thought I knew to be true. I have said and understood that no opinion is true, but in the peeling away of those presumptions, those blindspots, removing the log in my own eye–the thing that is true is just there beyond words, beyond what anyone thinks or says. It is always here, only obscured by that which I believe and think I see. Literally, “I was blind but now I see.”
No, Christ did not become my savior. Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna dissolve and become indistinguishable in this light. The crisis is still not resolved in the form it appeared in or as. But that which is far greater, or greatest, can be glimpsed regardless of circumstance. And in the midst of crisis (etymology the same as cross, crucifixion, crux, etc.)
I’m wishing everyone the gift of miracles today, the gift of sight. You are that. All of this is that. Miraculous.
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Begin again
After some time away, it seems auspicious to return again to participate in the universal dialogue upon which the title of this blog is based. One thing I know for sure after all these years is that this peace we’re talking about has nothing to do with any conceptual framework, spiritual or otherwise. In fact, the frame is most often a serious distraction from what it is meant to display.
In my experience, the teachings in many ways are the obscuration of what we are seeking, a cul-de-sac of sorts. Conversely, the errors in the teaching–as in what is seen when Toto pulls the curtain aside to reveal the smoke and mirrors of the powerful illusion–become the pointer to what is true.
In a kind of coincidence that in many ways defines what I’m talking about and what is always available, I was driving around thinking about what I was writing here, and a song came on, “Old Shoes” by Sean Rowe. I had not turned the music on, or iTunes, nor had I connected it to my car for some time, the song just started up about 5 minutes into the drive, seemingly out of nowhere. The line “I intend to find you on my own,” is key to where I’ve been, and to understanding the last 3 lines:
In this moment we’re alive
by Sean Rowe, sung by Sean Rowe and Markéta Irglová
In this moment we can die free
How can I make you, make you understand?
Please visit the Sessions page if you want to continue the discussion. Thank you to all who have shown up over the years.
The Deepest Peace 