This is an exceptionally lucid post. You are confronting an issue that is dear to my heart, i.e. the ability to discern. Or more specifically, the ability to discern deeper truth. Perfect.
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Posted by Mark Walter on 09/14 at 02:50 AM
In a way that’s really what it’s all about isn’t it? The ability to tell what’s what.
I think it must be a given that by definition we do not know what is ‘real’ although imo, we can know what is not and this is helpful.
Personally, I’ve come to believe that the ‘mystic path’ (for want of a better phrase - too lazy too grope for one right now) is actually this process of discernment - a learning how to ‘discern’ as opposed to ‘gaining’ any one specific thing or arriving at a definite point.
Could be wrong though - that’s the whole point, we just don’t know....
Posted by on 09/14 at 03:21 PM
I agree. It is about discernment. And then, once discernment is developed and refined, we not only perceive more clearly the things that were once unclear, but we also start to see the invisible, the supporting structure. To me, it’s similar to the difference between the way an everyday tenant views a high rise building, and the way the architect, engineer or builder sees it.
Posted by Mark Walter on 09/17 at 05:34 AM
Superheroes
It’s funny how sometimes you observe something and it makes you realise things about something quite different - often with no connection at all. Yesterday morning I was watching my daughter playing with some figures of the ‘Incredibles’ (we don’t really approve but what can you do?) and I realised I knew something I didn’t know I knew (if you catch my drift - if not, bear with me, it gets clearer).
What I realised was this: all desire and effort is on fact a desire an effort to reach God. There is no division into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, there is just misplaced effort - we are all desiring ‘God’ but some of us just don’t realise it. The desire for power, for that new car, to be ‘free’ or ‘enlightened’, to shag the girl next door - all this is the search for God. Of course, one may not be able to find God in these ways but I am not talking about the outward effort rather the underlying impulse which is often unknown even to the person doing the ‘desiring’.