09/29/05

It takes me a while to see what’s there. Usually, it takes leaving. I can see where I’ve been better than I can see where I am. I can see it better in the shower than at the site. “Of course!”, I say in the shower. “Why didn’t I see that then?” It helps if the shower is a reasonable drive from the scene. If I’m back home and the scene is in Montana, I have a hard time making my peace with the missed opportunity. I hate missing opportunities. I give myself opportunities, and miss them. I don’t know why.
Maybe, I don’t practice enough. Don’t look enough. Don’t see how others have seen enough. Here’s a scene, what do you see? I don’t ask that of myself enough. But, that’s the question, What do you see? What do you hear? What are you missing? What else is there?
This is made difficult by the fact that there isn’t something to see everywhere. I can dis myself for not seeing when there is nothing to be seen! Trying to “make something happen” is no way to receive a scene. Either it’s there, or it isn’t. Either you see it, or you don’t. I think it’s better to walk away and see it in the shower than to stay there trying to see.
Trying to see takes every bit of the fun out of it. Trying anything is work. Work is trying to do it right. Trying to be pleasing. Trying to get it done. So, just walk into a scene and look around. See it or not. If you don’t see it, maybe you will see it in the shower before you fly back home.
Another side to seeing is that it is easy to see things that aren’t there. I saw some sunflowers a couple of days ago near the auto fix it shop where my cam shaft synchronizer and sensor were repaired. I went back with a camera. The camera gets you close enough to see things about sunflowers, and scenes, that aren’t obvious driving by. Those sunflowers looked a lot better in my mind than they ever did in “real life.” They could have been the Before picture for a fertilizer commercial. That’s the way it is with seeing. It takes a second look, sometimes, to be able to see.
But, it’s all about seeing. Don’t let anyone sell you on something else. It’s seeing, damn it, all the way down. Perspective, perspective, perspective. Awareness, awareness, awareness. Seeing, seeing, seeing. There is no way to measure the difference perspective makes. It’s really, really big.
What are you doing to enlarge your perspective, deepen your awareness, see? Are you just saying the same things you have always said about your experience? Thinking the same thoughts? Repeating the same mantra? “Sorry Damn Life! Sorry Damn Life!” What are you seeing? What else is there to see?
You are evaluating your experience in light of what? Did you have a “photo” in mind that isn’t there, and now you think there is nothing there for you? And never will be? Disappointment in the scene can do that—it can rob you of the rest of the scene. Take a shower. Step back. Think about something else. Maybe something will “pop” into your awareness about the scene “from out of nowhere.” And, maybe, you are right. There is nothing to be seen in some scenes. Maybe, you’ll just have to find another scene. And, if you can’t arrange “another life,” maybe you can take a vacation from this one from time to time, or bring something to life in this one that isn’t there now. I do know that you cannot continue to see “this” in the same way you have always seen it and hope to be any happier with it than you are now. You have to see it differently. Or see something different about it. You transform the scene by transforming your perspective.
One way to do that is by talking about what you see with the right kind of people. The right kind of people can transform our perspective, just by listening. They don’t have to say anything. Just saying what we see, to the right kind of people, helps us see it differently. Or, changing your routine. Driving a different way to work. Walking in a different location. Altering your life pattern. You can’t live even a little differently and see the same things in the same way.
Of course, some things should never change. I’m here to tell you that fat-free half and half needs to go back to the cow. She needs to run that through again. It just won’t do, as it is. I don’t know what possessed me. “Fat free? I think I’ll try that.” Where is our Inner Advisor, our Inner Guide, when we need her, him? What’s an Inner Guide for who can’t be counted on in a pinch? I think my Inner Guide has been spending entirely too much time in the company of my Shadow. Picked up some bad habits. Started leaving me on my own way much more often than is healthy or wise. Trying to wean me away, no doubt, so the two of them can begin taking trips together. See the Inner World, you know, that kind of thing. I’m gagging to death on un-Guided purchases while they are looking through cruise brochures, giggling. What’s a guy to do? It’s hard to know when your Knower is locked up with your Shadow cooking up a hot little future all their own. I brought them together, and this is what I get? Fat-free half and half? It is solid evidence of a clear breakdown of the Inner System. No one with a fully functioning Inner System would ever suffer through an experience of fat-free half and half. I’m afraid to think of what I might do next.
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My current best bet regarding what God does, what we can count on from God, what the deal is with God is that God unfolds within us, emerges within us. There is that which is “of God” within us, and as we live toward that, align ourselves with that, live so as to bring that to life, to express that in the world, God “is born” in the lives of all of us. We become as God is. We incarnate God in space and time.
God is not the external arraigner of events and circumstances, the all-powerful, invincible force propelling creation toward the outcome God has prepared “before all ages,” according to the immutable “plan of salvation.” God is just poking around in the possibilities looking for what works to serve the common good. We are the best God can do.
That’s what I would say if you asked me to tell you about God.