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This is the Charles River in Boston
And then it became winter.
This is the Charles River in the
winter. It is deeply frozen over, the ice thick enough for people to walk on
it, or, more accurately, trudge on it.
The same river, summer and
winter, but two different rivers, l’maaseh, in reality. In
one you sail and in one you trudge. Each has its own beauty in its own time. But at no
time, summer or winter, does the river stop flowing.
You don’t see it in the
winter, but underneath all that ice is the same beautiful river, flowing
unceasingly.
What makes us different
from this river? Aren’t
we living much of the time in winter, walking along the top layer of “ice” that
separates us from our own rivers of living water? The ice that acts as a wall
between us and the flow of our subconscious, with all its fertile images, rich
solutions, dreams, fears to be resolved, unresolved questions and their
answers, and the landscape of healing and wholeness embedded there.
Winter has its beauty,
sometimes magnificently so, and its own power. But eventually we get tired of
trudging along, fighting the elements on the top surface of the underlying
profound awareness that is our subconscious. To live all the time, a whole
life, in winter, missing out on what may be the most important part of
ourselves, is a pity. We want to break through the cold “ice” that
separates us from the life we know we could live if only we could access
it.
How?
There are ways
to tap the intelligence and awareness that intellect alone cannot access. The first step might be to
understand what it means to perceive.
In physical terms, “vision”
means “eyesight.” But in the world of deeper individuals, many of them from
past generations, and to a certain extent, the world of contemporary vision
practitioners, as well as some artists from all generations, vision is
understood as perception that extends beyond the currently given.
There will always be visions
and perceptions that are reserved for the ones known as mystics. But
that doesn’t mean we normal people can’t have greater access to the world
around us and within us than we presently have.
Is an animal a “mystic”
because it hears, sees, or senses, beyond our range? Obviously not. What is beyond us is
perfectly normal to him. That's simply a physical fact. And we don’t have to be
mystics, either, to see beyond our present range.
The
eyes were given to us to use. Once we learn how to use them differently,
we can find perceptions and insights, solutions and answers, that we never
thought possible before. They
are usually of a sort that we haven't often experienced, and they come with a
subtlety and profundity that astounds us, leaving us with the feeling that we
have been given a great gift. And it's ours for the asking, just by
asking, "How?"
In
our tradition, our history, our seforim (books), and our holy
people, there are ways of seeing that are given to all of us and are accessible
to us, today. In fact, it may be essential, more than ever, that at this time in history, we access those ways of seeing in order to find
solutions to many of the seemingly insolvable situations we face constantly. We
see the problems clearly; they are, after all, "in our face."
They are so clear that we
should be able to see through them and see what we need to see -- solutions -- if
we will just understand a few things about seeing, and learn to look within our eyes.
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