Seeing Through Walls
(metaphor and language)
We walk into walls every day: the walls of words. These expressions can range from crippling to beautiful, and from constricting to liberating. Conversations can feel like duels, and some conversations are expressions of love. Some great minds reach far through the cage bars to grasp the fruit. Many great minds have unlatched the cage and escaped, and have taught many others to do the same through the craft of words. They have transcended the cage, and the words, and it is transcendence that is needed to understand and express beyond the confines of words.
Words and their sharp-trap arrangements are a journey and not a destination. There is no finality to words. They lead beyond themselves to some other realm, just as great minds point the way to escape the cage. Many people will meet such minds (leaders, teachers, philosophers, mystics, etc) and attach to the person as a destination of salvation and as a result lose sight of the path. We also do this with words. We attach to them as some definite truth and we lose sight of the path beyond. We so desperately want to be led. We don't realize that our self-appointed leaders are just as confused as the rest of us. They have been thrust into the reigns and burdened with the confusion of others, as well as their own.
Transcending becomes an act of abandonment. Words are the toys we don't want to share or give away. Yet, we suffer immensely from words. Imaginative writers express beyond the limitations of words and speak everything between the lines where a sublime reality awaits.
As a simple example, I made a sandwich for a friend one day. I told her I had put "senf" on her sandwich. She said "What's that?" I told her that she would like it. She didn't. I said "ok, I will make you a different sandwich". This time she loved it and asked what I put on it. I told her "mustard". She said "Oh I love mustard!" Little did she know that "senf" is "mustard" in German. Same thing, different delivery. I offered her no "mostaza".
We do this every day with our relations and abstractions. People are walking around heavily armed with instant walls and word bombs. We are so easily fooled by the rabbit in the hat. We are also fooled by our walls, but with a little laxity and transcendence we may be able to see through these towering obstacles.
The walls are all around us. They are words, thoughts, and feelings. They are ideas, systems, religions, and groups. Each requires the windows, doors, and transparency of transcendence to not become a prison. The madness of division has crept its way into many souls, and here we are battling the great wars of adhesion; tearing at one another through comparison. The walls shrink and constrict. The lungs tighten and the reactions become sharper, like rabid dogs. The attachments to our certitudes become a vice that squeezes the self. We breathe the stale air with barely shallow lungs. It is resistance against our solid walls, rather than simply opening the door.
With a cracking dust, wakening the door, fresh air sweeps in and the roof flies off. To see through walls is to awaken from the beautiful dream to find that it is a dream nonetheless.
(metaphor and language)
We walk into walls every day: the walls of words. These expressions can range from crippling to beautiful, and from constricting to liberating. Conversations can feel like duels, and some conversations are expressions of love. Some great minds reach far through the cage bars to grasp the fruit. Many great minds have unlatched the cage and escaped, and have taught many others to do the same through the craft of words. They have transcended the cage, and the words, and it is transcendence that is needed to understand and express beyond the confines of words.
Words and their sharp-trap arrangements are a journey and not a destination. There is no finality to words. They lead beyond themselves to some other realm, just as great minds point the way to escape the cage. Many people will meet such minds (leaders, teachers, philosophers, mystics, etc) and attach to the person as a destination of salvation and as a result lose sight of the path. We also do this with words. We attach to them as some definite truth and we lose sight of the path beyond. We so desperately want to be led. We don't realize that our self-appointed leaders are just as confused as the rest of us. They have been thrust into the reigns and burdened with the confusion of others, as well as their own.
Transcending becomes an act of abandonment. Words are the toys we don't want to share or give away. Yet, we suffer immensely from words. Imaginative writers express beyond the limitations of words and speak everything between the lines where a sublime reality awaits.
As a simple example, I made a sandwich for a friend one day. I told her I had put "senf" on her sandwich. She said "What's that?" I told her that she would like it. She didn't. I said "ok, I will make you a different sandwich". This time she loved it and asked what I put on it. I told her "mustard". She said "Oh I love mustard!" Little did she know that "senf" is "mustard" in German. Same thing, different delivery. I offered her no "mostaza".
We do this every day with our relations and abstractions. People are walking around heavily armed with instant walls and word bombs. We are so easily fooled by the rabbit in the hat. We are also fooled by our walls, but with a little laxity and transcendence we may be able to see through these towering obstacles.
The walls are all around us. They are words, thoughts, and feelings. They are ideas, systems, religions, and groups. Each requires the windows, doors, and transparency of transcendence to not become a prison. The madness of division has crept its way into many souls, and here we are battling the great wars of adhesion; tearing at one another through comparison. The walls shrink and constrict. The lungs tighten and the reactions become sharper, like rabid dogs. The attachments to our certitudes become a vice that squeezes the self. We breathe the stale air with barely shallow lungs. It is resistance against our solid walls, rather than simply opening the door.
With a cracking dust, wakening the door, fresh air sweeps in and the roof flies off. To see through walls is to awaken from the beautiful dream to find that it is a dream nonetheless.
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