To See What Is Beyond Me…

After I left the fundamentalist background I was born to, I drifted around for a long while, deeply afraid to look at the spiritual side of life…lest I burn in everlasting hellfire, for the transgression of leaving the pew I was born to occupy. The very one that my parents sat in, to the day of their departure from this plane of existence some thirty-five years, all in all. (There space was so well known to be theirs, that on the rare occasion some newbie inadvertently slipped into the well-worn spot my parents held, it was like the world tilted on its axis and made every thing look slightly skewed and crooked.)

Left hand side, twelve rows back, three different preachers, four different cushion colors, and Lord only knows how many scandals, they occupied their place in the world with little or no concern for its ultimate veracity. They didn’t question…and they could never understand why I did.

Even then, I suppose, it wasn’t enough for me to “just believe”. It took me years and years to understand how damaging “believing” is to growth, maturity, and responsibility.

To be a true believer is to close the door on any questions, doubts, insecurities, or concerns that might dog your heels, or cloud your brain. So if your search is for comfort, find a belief system that you are fond of and hunker down for the long haul, it will provide comfort, but it won’t provide increase, or gain…otherwise, we would still be making maps that showed the Earth as the center of the Universe and the world as flat as a pancake.

To “believe” is a posture developed for the express purpose of holding back the fear of the unknown, and I have come to understand the unknown is the only place real life happens.

It wasn’t easy letting go of believing. I fought it almost every step of the way, and there are still occasions now, I look around me and wish I could go backwards to the safety of a set of pre-prescribed rules for what is right, good, and appropriate. To give up Dogma, to stop preaching your personal point of view in the world, to stand back from the cacophony of voices trying to gain attention and approval, sometimes feels like utter chaos and total loss. And yet, I have come to see that the freedom and sanity I pledged myself to, cannot become mine, until I can rid myself of the views of the times, into which I was born.

I have heard a story that illustrates my understanding of the difference between Truth and beliefs very effectively. I have no basis for knowing whether the story is allegorical or historical, but I do know that it speaks to the idea, that the limits of Truth that we are capable of reaching, are bound and limited, by the dedication we have to the “beliefs” we have been taught.

The legend is set, during the first voyages to the Americas by the Conquistadors. A local Medicine man-a spiritual leader of his people-took to standing for long hours staring out to an empty horizon line across the broad, cool and blue-green expanse of ocean bordering his homeland. His people would come to him, worried for his sanity, and inquire why he spent so many hours staring out at an empty horizon. He told them he himself did not know, he only knew something was coming and something was about to change the world as they knew it.

Days passed, and still he stood, alone and staring…while all those around him went about their daily lives with no thought for the strangeness that had overtaken their beloved and revered Holy man.

And then…one day, he saw it. Shimmered into existence, right before his eyes, huge ships with heavy sails lining the horizon as far as he could see. Ships a name for something he had never seen, and because he had never seen such monolithic structures floating atop the water, he had no reference point for their existence and no subsequent belief that would have allowed him to see them, when they had first arrived.

His eyes were not at fault. What was lacking was the liberation of boundaries his beliefs required of him, boundaries that limited his sight, and with it his understanding. No such thing could exist, because he and his fellows had not first believed in them, which had rendered them invisible.

The legend goes, that once the Holy man was able to see the large Spanish ships, eventually all his tribe began to be able to see them as well. A belief shattered, a barrier breached, a wall tumbled, and a new truth had dawned…and with it a new age.

You no doubt, have heard the aphorism, “Ignorance is bliss”…that old saw has its roots in the understanding that to question your beliefs is to shake your world asunder. I know…all about that.

I questioned my fundamentalist upbringing, and lost more than I could chronicle here…but I gained the first tiny steps toward wisdom and depth.

Then I became a student of a man whose Wisdom and breadth of Soul is so vast it took me years to understand him and he shook my hold on the “New Age” beliefs, I had adopted to replace the fundamentalist ones, right down to the core. (In fact, he broke me free of them.)

He required, maybe even demanded, that I give up the safety of the known and head off to parts unknown.

I don’t do it well. I am not graceful, or beautiful, or beatific, in my search for greater and greater unfoldment. Half the time I don’t even know if I am headed in the right direction. I stumble, start over, withdraw and give up, so regularly that should anyone be counting on me they would have thrown in the towel, long ago.

If it were a game of Ready, Set, Go!! I would still be hugging the tree, counting to ten-over and over-long after everyone else has given up, and gone in to dinner.

But on the rarest of occasions, in the most mundane of circumstances, without the slightest effort on my part, I have been opened to moments of such profound originality, beauty, and aliveness…they have taken my breath away, refreshed my Soul, shod my feet, and moved me father down the path.

It is these moments of rare and precious clarity that keep me gracelessly moving toward an understanding only I can perceive, only I can develop, and only I can reap the benefits of.

I want…no, I yearn for the mountaintop.

My Teacher describes the mountain of Spiritual understanding in this way…

“At the base of a mountain I see what is before me. At the peak of the mountain I see what is beyond me.”

G. Addair

I want so much to see what is beyond me, to find the Truth of the unknown, buried inside my Soul, awaiting my arrival. What else is there, really? I have had money, or at least the taste of it. I have had notoriety, or at least the taste of it. I have had approval, applause, and recognition…and none of it is worth one jot or tittle, to borrow an old Biblical saying. But to see beyond yourself, to open your heart, to the beat of the drummer only you can hear, now that is something worth achieving.

Like butterfly kisses, I have had just enough of those moments to keep me on the path…heading straight for the unknown.

I will let you know…if ships, suddenly pop into view…

Until tomorrow…

R.

Photo courtesy of Clint Barnes whose work may be seen at www.flickr.com under the tag Senrab4

To See What is Beyond Me…essay by Ronni Miller copyright 2009 all rights reserved, reprinting available with author’s permission.