The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing. We need to see a little, that we may learn a lot.
ACIM-W-161:4:7-8
Hmmm! I am just so amazed by serendipity. I like to observe how when I am contemplating some learning...all kinds of lessons supporting that learning will end up on my lap from all kinds of amazing teachers. So I was writing yesterday about the need to change the way we look out at others and to ask others to look differently upon us. I spoke about how we tend to see "enemy" in another's bodily form and are unable to get beyond that to see who they truly are....divine creations.
Wired to see Danger and React
Well today I listened to another beautiful dharma talk from Plum village (see link below). Thay Phap Lu'u was speaking mostly about the non-duality of object/subject but he did speak to how we humans are "wired physically" to see danger in another. How we are equipped with this "low-resolution" perceptual survival mechanism...a left over from the early evolutionary process... to perceive danger, and then to almost instinctually defend and attack with fear and anger.
He explained how we tend to react from this place and therefore tend to "blame" others and life circumstance very quickly for creating our suffering. After this initial response we seem to need to discover a deeper rational for it...we seek "one cause" for our anger, fear, suffering. We attack first and then look for a reason why we attacked. "You made me angry because of...."
No One Cause For Suffering
When really the immediate interpretation we made of a cause for our suffering is not all there is. There is no one cause for our suffering. When I react to an "insult" directed at me from another human being, I may feel "hurt" and then reactively blame that person , "How dare you say that about me? That is so cruel!" The one cause for my suffering in that moment, I may see, is what they said about me.
In truth, however, if I took the time to think clearly about it...I would see that their words were only triggers for a deeper suffering already in me. I may see that my suffering was actually a result of an idea I had of them, an expectation about how they should always act and always be; or an idea about myself that I was protecting , or maybe it was triggering past trauma or shame. Maybe their words were echoed words my parents used on me as a child. Maybe I had developed a habitual pattern of thinking and reacting to such words. Or maybe I was hangry because I missed lunch or cranky from not sleeping well the night before. Likely it was all of these things!
"You are partially right?"
What we need to remember is that the reasons for our suffering in this moment, after feeling the sting of an insult, are many. Though when we see only " a little" we cannot see that the insult and the insulter are only a "partial cause" of that.
Imagine if, after we counteracted to the insult in an angry blaming way, the person turned to us and said, "You are partially right?"
Huh??
That would take us by surprise, wouldn't it? At first we might react some more to that truth but eventually we might calm down to consider it. Then we could step back from our reactivity, our low resolution perceptual wiring...to look deeper into that suffering. ...to see that there were many causes for it. We then may be able to look deeper into that person and see beyond the bodily form that has the potential to harm us...to the divine creation beneath.
Both the suffering and the person whose behaviour is believed to aggravate that suffering are divine creations worth embracing and examining more closely.
Let's attempt to get beyond the little we see so we can learn a lot.
All is well
Foundation for Inner Peace ( 2007) A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. Workbook, Lesson 161. Mill Valley: Foundation For Inner Peace
Plum Village (January 2020) On Suffering and Happiness/Dharma Talk by Thay Phap Lu'u https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9kckqDP2KA
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