The Doors of Perception

I posted on Facebook the other day that I was going to try to see the divine in everyone I met. It sounded like a great idea, but after half a day I realized I was going to have to leave the apartment to do it (ha, ha!). To avoid getting blasted by the divine light that was sure to result, I decided to take it slow. I went to Whole Foods and Joseph-Beth Bookstore last night, and it was fairly late, so there weren't many people around. One of the employees at Whole Feeds greeted me with a friendly smile -- it wasn't at all hard to see a light shining through her. I was off to a good start.


But looking back now, I realize that even with my goal in mind, I was avoiding looking at people around me. I am often hesitant to look too closely at other people, whether from shyness or fear of appearing rude or whatever it might be. Actually, I'm now wondering if the habit of not really looking at others is part of what makes us dehumanize them. It's easy to go from avoiding their eyes to seeing them as objects in your way to the checkout counter to cutting them off in traffic. And it's no difficulty at all to move from that to projecting all of your shadow onto them. Everything you refuse to own in yourself gets shifted onto other people, and the less they seem to be like you the easier it is to do.


Did someone tell everyone about what I'm doing? All I know is that I received a radiant smile from a young man, a stranger, in the parking lot a little while ago. When I got to Starbucks and decided to challenge myself by actually looking around to see who was here, I immediately caught someone's eye and received another smile. We all know how powerful a smile can be, especially on a dark winter day. I've received at least three bonus ones in the last 24 hours, and I really think it was my unspoken intention to be more open that communicated itself to other people. Change your mind and change your life.


I was at a conference at school in the fall, and a young artist was there with an exhibit she called "Mirror Box." It consisted of climbing inside a machine that, with the aid of light and mirrors, allowed you to see your face and another person's superimposed. It sounds so simple, but consider: you climb inside and find yourself face to face with someone completely unlike you and then, by the magic of art, see what emerges from putting the two of you together. I tried it with two strangers, the second of whom was a young man with very dark skin and hair, about as unlike me with my Irish paleness as could be (his family was from Iran). Yet when I looked at the combination of our faces, there was nothing strange about the result. We looked like an ordinary person, not even particularly exotic.


I think we have been sold a bill of goods that encourages us to either ignore the suffering of others or to blame them for everything that's wrong, whether it's the Democrats demonizing the Republicans, Christians doing the same to Muslims, whites and blacks at each other's throats, or the rich against the poor. (My guess is that many of the 1 percent are just as upset at the state of the world as the rest of us.)


For all the thought and energy that goes into policy discussions on how to solve problems like famine, poverty, environmental degradation, and lack of economic opportunity, I'm starting to think the answers might be more basic than they seem. Maybe we just need to, as they say in Jungian terms, take back our projections. I think that is an eye-opener far more mind-blowing than any psychedelic experience could ever be.


If you ask me God left the world unfinished on purpose. We're supposed to do the rest. We are the co-creators and need to figure out how to eliminate suffering, advance the condition of the human race, and live in harmony with nature. Seeing God in others is not limited to human beings but includes all other creatures and the world itself. It means supporting efforts to eradicate hunger; sending money to help save the wolves and the polar bears (I know we'll be sorry when they're gone); and supporting the efforts of other countries to attain higher standards of living and more human rights. It means paying attention and speaking up.


I'm not saying anything that hasn't been better said by others. I'm not saying anything that I haven't always believed, but what's different now is that I better understand how I'm implicated in what's wrong in the world, usually by the things I fail to do more than bad intentions. Studying mythology has made me aware of (1) how unified we really are and (2) how there is often something very different from what appears to be there, on the surface, trying to peek through. There are so many openings to the divine, both in and around us. "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru' narrow chinks of his cavern." -- William Blake.


I also have to say quite honestly that some of my best education has occurred since I stopped working and stayed at home to finish my dissertation. I have time to read, think, and consider. I think the struggle to make a living blinds a lot of us to what is really going on because it takes so much time and energy and leaves little over for anything else. Do we need a revolution in the accepted way of doing things? Is our Protestant work ethic making us less human? Just saying.