Tag Archives: Perception

Unusual and Unexpected

“Bruce is this.”  Or so I’ve said.  But sometimes I’m not right.

1.  Bruce loves blogging and does so about two days out of three.

Except when he doesn’t, such as the last three days.  Firstly, I didn’t want to.  “But you always want to.” >  “No, actually, I don’t.”  I watched my unwillingness, sometimes scared about what it meant, and sometimes just fascinated with another part of me.  Secondly, I couldn’t think of anything to say.  “But you always think of something, even if it doesn’t come until your fingers are poised over the keys.” > “No, I’ve been blank.  And then the fear came of not having anything to say for the rest of my life.”  Wow.  Look at my brain going off into a doomsday scenario.  How strange.

Hmm … I appear to be typing.

2.  Bruce loves watching the world junior hockey tournament every year, cheering on Canada.

I turned on the TV yesterday for game one:  Canada versus the USA.  I watched for ten minutes.  I wasn’t excited by the flow of play.  I didn’t care about Canada winning.  I wasn’t interested in seeing Mitch Marner on the ice.  He’s a member of our local junior hockey team – the London Knights.  “Oh my goodness.  Who has taken over my couch?  Have I turned into this perpetually peaceful person who no longer gets excited by his experiences in this physical world?” > “No, I don’t think so.  Maybe I’m just getting excited by other things these days, such as going to the gym for strength training.”  And maybe the sports section of The London Free Press is a thing of the past for me.  In any event, I sense that whatever draws me in the future will bring forth zest.

3.  Bruce loves action films and can’t wait to see the next Star Wars movie.

Renato and I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night.  I was bored.  I got tired of the chases and the shooting.  I got tired of everything going so fast.  I glommed on to the tender moments, such as when Leia and Han Solo were looking into each other’s eyes.  “But Bruce, you’ve always enjoyed the Die Hard movies, Keifer Sutherland in 24, a good old disaster flick.” > “Well, now it seems that I want to watch good stories, love stories, human beings being oh so human.”  Such as a movie I saw last week – Room – in which a mom and her young son are imprisoned by a predator for years.  To see the love between the two of them, plus the heartache, was so sweet.

***

I am inconsistent.  I contain multitudes
Walt Whitman

Illusions

A man sees a coiled rope in the dusk and mistakes it for a serpent, and is therefore frightened.  When day dawns, he sees that it was only a rope and that his fear was groundless.  The Reality of Being is the rope.  The illusion of a serpent that frightened him is the objective world.

I see lots of serpents.  What if they’re all unreal?

***

This bronchitis is bad.  It causes me great suffering.

I’m going to be alone for the rest of my days.

Jody isn’t with me anymore.

I can’t memorize long speeches, especially the hundreds of lines that Jake speaks in the play Jake’s Women.

I’m getting old.  My skin is sagging.

Nobody understands me.

I don’t have enough energy to write this blog post.

I’m no good at sex.

I should be interested in politics.

I won’t be strong enough in 2016 to ride my bicycle across Canada.

I’ll never get good at meditating.

I should sell my house and settle for a little apartment in London.

I am deficient.

Time is running out for me.

I shouldn’t walk around downtown London at night.

It’s too hard for me to learn how to fingerpick on my guitar.

500 copies of Jody’s book is way too many.

People won’t like my acting.

This summer, when I’m driving through Western Canada on my road trip, I won’t be able to find a place to stay at the end of the day.

Life isn’t fair.

Life takes all my energy away.

“Life is hard, and then you die.”

***

Silly me

The Slider Knob

Imagine a knob that can be moved to the left or right.  On the far left is the number 0. Then there are ticks on a scale – 1, 2, 3, … all the way to 10 on the far right.  I remember a similar setup on the dashboard of one of my cars, Jade perhaps (a 1996 Honda Accord).  Maybe it controlled the heat.  I can’t recall.

Jade’s sliding control started me thinking about my life.  I’d had moments of bliss, of a great unwinding, of peace.  They only showed up occasionally.  What dominated my head was the usual: feeling bad about myself, and being afraid of disapproval, aloneness, poverty, ill health, plus a large dose of etcetera.  As for the slider, I saw it set to 9 or even 9 1/2.  That huge length to the left was normal consciousness.  The itty bitty part at the right end hosted breakthroughs into something … different.

Then I got the idea to take hold of the slider and move it to the left.  Was 7 and 3 possible?  Sure, I could open myself to mystery enough to get there.  What about 3 and 7?  Ah … I doubt it.  Who could be that open?  (Well, I could, said the tiny voice holding up a tiny hand halfway to the sky.)  Then there’s 0 and 10.  Ridiculous.  After all, I have to live in the world – make a living, have normal conversations, stay healthy.  Not some little Buddhist guy ahh-ooming all day.  Okay, granted.  I have to place these feet of mine on the ground.  But can’t I also soar to the heavens?

Can I live my life 1 and 9?  Can I animate virtually every moment with Spirit, love, kindness and compassion – towards me as well as to others?  I think so.

And is it really putting my fingers on the knob and intentionally moving things to the left?  Or does that just happen by the grace of God?  Maybe both.  What I do know is that over the years the knob has headed west some, and the distance of better-worse, more-less, and this-and-not-that is less than what’s on the right: a letting go into bigness.

Plato’s Cave

Plato was a Greek philosopher from around 400 B.C.  Another smart guy from history.  He reflected on what is real in life, and has shown us a new possibility using a powerful metaphor.

Plato asks us to imagine a cave, with a group of prisoners facing the back wall, their bodies and heads chained and unable to move.  Talk about a restricted view of life.  Behind these folks, near the entrance of the cave, is a massive bonfire.  Between the prisoners and the fire is a walkway on which other people walk by, carrying a varety of objects in their hands.  They cast shadows on the back wall, the only things that the immobilized humans can see.

If you can only see one thing, that has to be what’s real for you.  What if so much of our present day lives is just a shadow of reality?  Like gossip, small talk, complaining, winning and losing, better and worse, succeeding and failing?

The prisoners decided that the highest status holders among them were those who could best predict what shadow would come along the walkway next, or … seeing a particular shadow, be able to identify all its details of shape and size.  Those were the champions of life, similar to the ones today whom so many of us worship in the realms of sports and entertainment.  Could this all be false?

What would happen if someone released a prisoner from the chains (or they magically figured out how to set themselves free)?  No doubt they would turn around and see flesh-and-blood human beings walking in front of them, entities with a vibrant aliveness that they had never experienced before.  Would these beings be honoured and loved, or reviled and condemned?

And what of the fire?  Would the intense light blind them?  The heat fry their circuits?  Or would awe transform their faces?

Beyond the fire is the mouth of the cave, and past that the big, wide world … infinitely beyond those shadows.

What transcendent realities am I willing to let in?
What’s just too scary to accept?
Will I let my life be transformed?
Perhaps