Visible to the Naked Eye

“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 thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 

“Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child 

 -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

 
― Thich Nhat Hanh

 

If the truth be told, I guess I've always been a freakin' Geek.  As a youngster, I was curious about everything!  

 

I spent hours and hours observing the weather, stars, clouds, rocks, fossils, trees, bumblebees, ants, frogs, birds, squirrels, whatever.

It all fascinated me.
 

In school, when I wasn't parked in the corner (or the hallway) for not being able to sit still and keep my mouth shut, I loved learning just for the sake of learning.  Although this meant that I had my nose in a book a lot of the time, I also was quite "hands on."  I loved to do natural science.  I explored. I collected. I identified. I classified.  

 

I also loved to explore man-made things.  After a few missteps, I quickly learned to choose my battles wisely.  I promised I would only take apart certain "approved" items to see what made them tick.  Sometimes, I was even able to "fix them" and/or successfully put them back together. 

 

One morning, I found a broken box camera in the alley.  I immediately took it home and disassembled it.  I soon noticed that everything appeared to be upside down when I peered through one of the lenses.   

 

WTF?  

 

Moments later, I discovered the world righted itself and things were bigger when I lined up two of the lenses I had removed. Within a half an hour, I had made a simple telescope. That night, I charted the position of the bright star that appeared outside my bedroom window.  The next day my teacher told me that this particular orb was actually the planet Jupiter! He then showed me a drawing of the entire solar system! I went home, an aspiring astronomer.  I gazed at the moon through my telescope, and kept track of Jupiter's change in position each night in my notebook-- until a new project appeared to capture my attention.  

 

Yet, although I was rewarded with acknowledgment and a few gold stars for such things, I soon learned that another arena of curiosity and exploration wasn't going to be welcomed at all.  I had many experiences that brimmed with a sense of mystery and magic.  Yet, these early perceptions of the spiritual dimension of life were consistently ignored, avoided, -- or squashed.  The adults in my life didn't seem to have a clue.

That should come as no surprise.  

 

Like most of you who may be reading this, I grew up in a culture immersed for centuries in a civilization steeped in scientific materialism.  In a society supercharged by a capitalist economy laced with white supremacy, and a distorted and limited form of Christianity, the spiritual dimension of life is generally distrusted, feared, or dismissed as superstition.  It was presented as either a scary movie realm of ghosts and demons -- or a "heavenly realm" that can only be experienced after death.  To make matters worse, this heaven was said to be an exclusive, "members only" destination.  It was only available to those who believe in a set of certain specific things about the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.  

 

If, like the vast majority of human beings throughout the history of our species, a person believed differently, they were promised an eternity of extreme, torturous, cruelty and suffering.  As a young child, this version of a God who Jesus called a loving father, and the Bible proclaimed was Love itself, made no sense to me.  

 

I'd already glimpsed something much more amazing and affirming.

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