As I was praying this morning, I became acutely aware of something that comes to the surface from time to time throughout my life. Awareness.
Who am I? Really? Is what I see through my eyes and experiences really what everyone else sees or experiences about their own world in their own way? Or is what I see through my eyes just my own? Who are these others, and how do they fit in?
The more I would dig into these esoteric questions, the more I shied away from them. It would be as though I’d lose myself and spiral down a dark hole into a place I didn’t want to go. Or wasn’t certain where it would end up.
Awakening…
The reality is that each one of us has a degree of this type of self awareness. We see things and wonder at times if it is a world within our own imagination, or if anyone else really lives beyond what we see.
At other times, we are acutely aware that we are not alone. We are driven for relationship, so being isolated in one’s own world isn’t our experiential reality.
We need each other. And our hyper focus on who we are should make us keenly aware of others beyond what we are experiencing.
But that isn’t quite what I mean…
It’s somewhat hard to explain.
When you look in the mirror in the morning, do you see a reflection? Who is it that is in the mirror? Is it really you? Is it what others see of you? Or is it a reflection of something else that is beyond what you actually see?
Is blue the same color to me as it is for someone else? Or is to someone else what I see as pink, which is why I would not like it?
What is this world you live in? You experience pain, suffering, laughter, joy, sensations of touch, sight, smells, taste, and peace. There are times in which you will find yourself lost in the writings of a good book, softness of the fur of a cat, or the silliness of a squirrel as he tries to deceive a car from finding his particular tree.
The sound of a running brook, or the call of a bird will fill our ears with nature’s music. A brush of wind against your skin will awaken you to life beyond the body.
All these things that are external to you are not part of you. They become a part of your experiences which shape who you are.
Yet this isn’t what I mean, either…
It goes deeper.
It is a feeling like there is an existence that is only seen through my eyes. Like the world that is passing in front of me is so external to who I am that I cannot be touched by it. Even though it affects me.
It is a feeling of seeing a world beyond my physical realm that affects me, but isn’t really outside of me.
The best way to describe it is looking at a movie. We see what is going on, are affected by what we see, yet it isn’t who we are. It really isn’t a part of us.
Awareness is hard to explain…
Especially when you it goes beyond words.
Perhaps that vision is to bring about the understanding that there is more to this life than we can see. Or explain.
Life is beyond human understanding. It cannot be fully grasped.
We can extinguish it. And destroy it. There are those who want to control it.
But we cannot explain it.
And, in the end, we cannot really fully understand it.
It isn’t easily found…
It isn’t found in a mantra or physical fitness. There is no science that can explain it any more that it can explain electricity. We can quantify it, but we cannot understand what it actually is.
It is found interiorly. And the answer can only be found through prayer. But not fully within the scope of this lifetime.
We see through the glass darkly, says St. Paul. But when we die, we’ll see what is beyond that pane of darkened glass and understand the things we cannot, in this life, understand.
Then, and only then, will this question that affects me, and, I am certain, others, so deeply be answered. And in a way that only each one of us will be able to fully understand.