Individually and collectively, we attach symbolic meaning to people, places, things, and behaviors for the purpose of fulfillment of otherwise unfulfilled needs and desires.
That's why sports fans so often refer to the accomplishments of their favorite teams with the word "We." Sports fans often say things like "We beat them" and "We won." You'll never see someone admiring a Monet in an art gallery exclaim "I painted a masterpiece!!"
That's because sports fandom carries with it more symbolic weight for most people than does an appreciation of impressionist art.
While it's not socially or morally acceptable to express the innate aggression which is hardwired into our DNA through acts of violence, it's perfectly acceptable to honor your aggressive tendencies by subconsciously setting up that designated hitter or running back as your proxy warrior. You don't have to unleash your fists of fury on the streets of Anytown, U.S.A. when your favorite teams can get the job done for you.
Deconstruct the symbols upon which you build your life, and you've gained a measure of wisdom and true knowledge.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
You can't hold the river in a paper cup...
Devotees of various religious and spiritual paths will often consider the teachings of their savior or guru to be complete truth, the whole of spiritual knowledge worth knowing.
The problem with this aspect of faith is that it ignores the limitations of human consciousness.
A year or two after I moved to Boston in the late 80's, I met a woman at a small shop. When our eyes met, I flashed on something which I couldn't and still can't accurately describe. It was a bit like hieroglyphics, but it wasn't that. Maybe something like a mathematical formula dancing before my eyes, but it wasn't precisely that either.
In that moment, I had reached the outer boundary of what the human mind can perceive and peered beyond that hard limit...and I lacked the adequate tools to perceive what I had experienced. The five senses failed me in that moment, as did rational thought and emotional feeling.
We can never know the whole truth while in human form. We're bound by the limitations of language, visual representation, reason, and emotion. The mind of God doesn't fully fit into the vessel of humanity which we inhabit.
That also holds true for divine beings incarnate on earth.
Take the spiritual essence of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammad, or any other spiritual teacher and put that essence on earth in human form, and even that divine consciousness is limited by the bounds of human consciousness while on earth. You can't peer behind the veil completely when you've got to move through this plane in all of the traditional and necessary ways. If you could fully perceive the consciousness in every molecule of a coffee cup sitting on a nearby table, or see every parallel and alternate reality without regard to space, time, or frequency, you'd reach a point of consciousness overload where the sheer volume of information placed before you would make the act of picking up that coffee cup impossible.
That applied to Jesus Christ, just as surely as it applies to you or me.
Any enlightened being who walks the earth in human form has certain blinders on, blinders which make possible functioning in daily life. The words they speak and write are limited by the constraints of human language and symbology.
I don't claim to know the whole truth, but I do know that that truth is so much bigger than anything we can begin to imagine. The most that any teacher or teaching can communicate is but a mere whisper, a hint of something much greater.
The problem with this aspect of faith is that it ignores the limitations of human consciousness.
A year or two after I moved to Boston in the late 80's, I met a woman at a small shop. When our eyes met, I flashed on something which I couldn't and still can't accurately describe. It was a bit like hieroglyphics, but it wasn't that. Maybe something like a mathematical formula dancing before my eyes, but it wasn't precisely that either.
In that moment, I had reached the outer boundary of what the human mind can perceive and peered beyond that hard limit...and I lacked the adequate tools to perceive what I had experienced. The five senses failed me in that moment, as did rational thought and emotional feeling.
We can never know the whole truth while in human form. We're bound by the limitations of language, visual representation, reason, and emotion. The mind of God doesn't fully fit into the vessel of humanity which we inhabit.
That also holds true for divine beings incarnate on earth.
Take the spiritual essence of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammad, or any other spiritual teacher and put that essence on earth in human form, and even that divine consciousness is limited by the bounds of human consciousness while on earth. You can't peer behind the veil completely when you've got to move through this plane in all of the traditional and necessary ways. If you could fully perceive the consciousness in every molecule of a coffee cup sitting on a nearby table, or see every parallel and alternate reality without regard to space, time, or frequency, you'd reach a point of consciousness overload where the sheer volume of information placed before you would make the act of picking up that coffee cup impossible.
That applied to Jesus Christ, just as surely as it applies to you or me.
Any enlightened being who walks the earth in human form has certain blinders on, blinders which make possible functioning in daily life. The words they speak and write are limited by the constraints of human language and symbology.
I don't claim to know the whole truth, but I do know that that truth is so much bigger than anything we can begin to imagine. The most that any teacher or teaching can communicate is but a mere whisper, a hint of something much greater.
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