So the other day in Paris I was walking in the Park Montsouris. I was there for my grandfather's funeral. It was a busy time. The funeral service was beautiful. The priest had a luminosity about him and spoke a message that all could hear and understand. It was full of depth and truth for the practicing believer, yet open and accessible for the person who may never have embraced religion or for that matter a spiritual practice. I loved him for his message and the potential truth he brought forth. No politics, no bias, no putting others down to make his own convictions seem more worthy. Just truth and love, and the gospel ideas illuminated for all to witness and absorb. I felt grateful walking through the park, it was a beautiful day. I had the sense of seeing the trees and their shimmering leaves with a fullness and satisfaction. The shimmer of God himself singing to me through his creation.
Then the thought occurred to me about the shift in my being in those moments after prayer and meditation. It is as though life which presents itself much of the time in 2-D, suddenly shifts to 3- D. There is a wholeness to reality. You can see it with your eyes, feel it with your body and immerse in it in the completeness of Being. Much of the time we are circling in a tornado of thoughts and ideas. We are driven by doing and accomplishing. We rush from one task to the next feeling so powerful. The more we check of our to-do's the better. Then when we have no more steam, we collapse. Our power is burned out till rest and morning coffee. Other times we are immersed in our emotions feeling the sorrow of things lost, or broken. The joy of a new acquisition or a good meal, maybe a satisfying conversation. We either want the emotion to be gone, or be prolonged. We know in our heart of hearts that that is illusion—the emotion will collapse and make way for the next desire, emotion or activity at hand.
What is that funny thing that takes place after meditation and prayer, a spiritual ritual or practice? It seems there is a cohesion of sorts, the activity is calmed and the emotions are still. "Be still and know that I am God". And there you are....no doing or feeling. Just being. Basked in Him, all is whole, all is Perfect "Be ye therefore perfect even as the Father". Life in 2-D has shifted to life in 3-D. Could it be that this is actually where life is meant to be lived? Could this be the true meaning of "Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind"....Is this the one pointedness that Yoga aims to guide us toward? I think so.
What is it about 3's? Obviously an important number in understanding our Father, through his son and the Holy Spirit, three in ONE. They say the physical body likes things in threes, and as a therapist once said, "the body does not lie". This whole thought process brought me to another place. We are mind, body and spirit. Also three in one. Why then do people so readily dismiss the spirit aspect of the equation? It is a mystery, really, and a rather strange phenomenon. Here is the key which unlocks the mystery of being, the last clue to experience life in 3-D, and yet it takes the backseat, or no seat, when perhaps it is actually meant to be the driver.
We take pains for the physical body. We are told it needs nourishment to survive, and so we take from creation and give to our bodies. The body likes activity, so we do activity, sport, dance. The world rejoices in a beautifully sculpted body bearing the fruits of many moons of training. We ooh and ahh at a dancer’s form and physique or the strength of a marathoner. We recognize the importance of the care that was put in, and admire those who have done so diligently and well. Great minds like to think, to discover, to invent and create. We admire those who have high degrees and big accomplishments. We encourage education, thoughtful thinking and reasoning. And yet....so many who care deeply about the former two, seem to let the third aspect of our being go by the wayside, or have no care whatsoever. My father once told me he learned in college about the metaphysical aspects of our being, that there is an inherent desire in human beings for the metaphysical—hence the creation of religion, spiritual practices, etc. That is all well and good. One can come to an intellectual understanding that man has a metaphysical desire, and therefore creations and activities which help to satisfy that desire. Why then does the logic follow in this particular realm of our being that because we understand, we can now dismiss as irrelevant and unimportant?
We understand that man needs nourishment, so we nourish, we understand that the mind needs stimulation so we stimulate. And yet here we are once —we have a metaphysical need, we understand, so we ignore and discard. Strange isn't it? It seems people are ready to dismiss spirit so easily, maybe for a logical incoherence, perhaps, an aspect of an idea that isn't immediately pleasant or doesn't gel with one's feelings. Many people dismiss spirit because as a child it seemed appealing but as an adult no longer. As though education and life experience has made them too wise for the infinite wisdom that passes all understanding. We are asked to become like children, not to stay as a child, but rather become like children. What does this mean? “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1. Cor. 13: 11).
Maybe there is something in adulthood and becoming wise to the world that risks stopping the evolution of a person's spirit, and the call is to surmount these pitfalls in order to once again become like children. We are called to be in the world but not of the world—a call not to stop because of intellectual pride or childish emotions that one clings to, but a call to die to what was before in order to be reborn into infinite intelligence that goes beyond logic, beyond emotion. That which illumines something more, something unexplainable and incomprehensible, but real and tangible nonetheless. We are called not to remain stagnant in emotion or to become brittle in cold hard logic but rather fuse these 2-D's of life into a harmonious whole 3-d experience? ft5ygMaybe, just maybe life in 3-D, unity with the three in one is what it is actually all about.
