What we live is our imagination.
Our outer lives reflect the content of our inner world. What we are, in addition to the essence we were born with, is the cumulative result of all we have experienced in the world from the moment we first opened our eyes and inhaled our first breath -- even from our first moments as sensate fetuses.
In order to "make sense" of reality, our minds process the raw data of our experiences, and in doing so create belief systems. As children some are encouraged to see themselves as powerful and capable of affecting the reality they experience.Their adult lives manifest this belief. On the other hand, we all have acquaintences who were conditioned to see themselves as victims of life, and accordingly, their lives reflect this belief. Some go through life saying "I will make this happen, or this happened because I . . ." while others say "What will happen to me now?"
There are those who attempt to define life by believing only in what is tangible: by what they see, hear, or touch. "If I can't see/touch/hear it, I won't/don't believe it." This seems to define the most rational and scientific way to live. Yet our very senses betray us:
I sit at a wooden desk.
It is hard.
I hit it with my fist and it doesn't yield.
I can't see through it.
It is still.
Based on visual and tactile data, I conclude this desk is a solid, and further, I will define as solid all other physical objects which possess similar traits. And I will be wrong.
All solidity and stillness is an illusion. There is as much space between the atoms which comprise this desk as there are atoms themselves, and so it is with the space between the components of the atoms. And these atoms and their subordinate elements are animated, have velocity, and are never at rest. In believing this desk to be solid and still, I am deceiving myself--my most trusted senses have betrayed me.
Take a bicycle wheel and place it on a verticle axis so that it lies on a horizontal plane. While it is still, I can place a stick between the spokes. Begin to rotate this wheel at a sufficient speed and again try to insert this same stick between the spokes. The stick meets seemingly "solid" resistance and is repelled. The spinning wheel behaves as a solid, yet it is in fact not.
The world is full of such illusions, yet we delude ourselves with rationale and scientific confidence. Surely science has its value--it has the capacity to provide the theoretical framework, the constructs which allow insights into our perceptions, such as those of the desk and the wheel. But science does not, nor can it ever begin to address the space between the materiale, nor the original and eternal motion that animates the entire universe.
Take anything your mind can imagine and deconstruct it. At each moment let the question "Why?" lead you on to more fundamental levels of understanding. You will eventually reach a place where you can reduce no further, and cannot answer "Why?" nor even "How?" At this stillpoint one stands at the threshold of the concept of a Creator.
Our senses and minds cannot carry us beyond this threshold. In the face of our ultimate ignorance, only an open, humble heart and faith can gain us any ground.
|
