Hi. Do I know you?

I sometimes wonder if we ever really know another person or if we overlay that person with an expectation that is strictly ours. An extreme example of this would be the neighbor that the police arrest one day and charge with the murder of 15 people over a period of five years. Inevitably the people in the neighborhood describe him as “that nice Mr. Jones. So polite and friendly. I just can’t believe it. A quiet man but a good neighbor.”

At the other end of the spectrum, take a look at your spouse, if you’re married, or another important person in your life. Can you honestly say you have never been bewildered by their reaction to a chance remark? Could it be that you only know the person you want them to be and that your perception of them is mostly an overlay of that person?

I suspect that this is the case with all our relationships. We only see what we have a need to see.

Strange habits

People do strange things and, for the most part, simply accept them as “what we do”. Take clapping as an example. Why in the world do we bang our hands together as a sign of approval? Bizarre.

Permanency

If you reflect for a moment you will realize that nothing is permanent…not me, not you, not the Earth we live on, no human relationship. Cars wear out, houses fall down, nations and cultures disappear. Indeed one day even the Sun which energizes all life on Earth will be no more and in its’ passing it will take the Earth with it.

This is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. It’s just the way that things are.

Who knows what will arise from our passing? Could you predict an apple tree from the death of an apple seed? Look at the seed and see the fruit inside? Note the faces of the people who will benefit from the death of the seed when it becomes a tree?

Quotes

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

- Jonathan Swift

Toys and Things

I saw a bumper sticker recently that read “He who dies with the most toys wins” and it reminded me of the experience of cleaning out my parent’s house after they both died.

My father was a tinkerer and had built a nice wooden work bench in the basement where he had numerous hand tools, all neatly displayed and organized. Most were related to his hobby of rock hounding and jewelery making. They were an important part of his life and packing up the ones that neither my brother nor I wanted was a surrealistic experience. One day they were important and valuable and the next day…they were just stuff.

The very things that we find so important and necessary in our lives suddenly lose their meaning when the owner dies. It isn’t the object, the toy, that has value. It’s the experience of using it that has value.

Time is the great deception

…and yet I believe that time itself doesn’t exist. It is the parade of events that we use to mark our place in the great play in which we participate.

How can it be that time doesn’t exist? Clearly we see the hands on the clock move around and the leaves of the calendar turn. Surely that is the passage of a linear something that we call time? But no. Think of a movie film reel wound into its’ can. The whole story exists at once tucked into the can. The illusion of a linear something is produced one frame at a time but all frames exist at once. It is only our viewpoint that changes. We who are embedded in the strip cannot see it from the outside and so have no realization of the whole. Nor can we rewind. Once a frame is gone it is gone forever to us and we can never return to it again.

The moving hand writes

And, having writ, moves on.

Not all thy piety nor all thy wit can lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all the tears wash out a word of it.

(From the Rubiyat of Omar Kayam)

Beauty surrounds us

There is beauty in the most common and mundane items. Open your eyes, take time to look. Life goes by day by day, one after the other until our allotment is used up and then it is too late. Do you want to meet your maker and have to tell him/her/it that you weren’t interested enough in creation to stop and look? That you were too busy “rocking out” and being cool to bother to look? To busy making a living? Too busy achieving social standing?

Reality. Is it real?

Nothing is real. Not me, not you, not the Earth we walk on or any of its’ components. At the atomic level all is empty space and energy. It’s all a construct for lesson learning, a vehicle for the spirit. Time and again we return, each time to learn a new lesson, interact with different personifications of our soul group. It’s all a play. At the end of the play the spirit, the true actors, withdraw, take lessons from the reviews and regroup to assume new roles, to enact another play.

Sleep, the little death

Why it is that we fear death and seek out sleep? Someone, can’t recall who, once described sleep as the “little death” and when you think about it that is a pretty apt description. So we routinely lose consciousness and find it pleasant but resist mightily the idea or fact of death.

As we age many of us find death far less intimidating than we did while young though. I went through a period of a couple of years when five members of my immediate family died from one cause or another. The whole thing left me reeling (and the oldest member of my family save one) but, in the end, it was a period of growth and realization and certain experiences after those deaths convinced me that death is indeed a gateway and not an end. Someday I may write about those experiences if they turn out to be of interest to anyone but me.