Several years ago, when I was teaching mathematics, a
young man in one of my classes told me that his sister, who was also a student
at the school, said that she had seen me walking across the campus and thought
I was handsome, - until she saw me close-up!
This got me to thinking: Maybe much of what we see is
not part of reality at all, but what we project from our own minds. From a
distance, I probably looked like someone she thought of as handsome, perhaps a
movie star.
More than likely, this projection from mind applies
not just to seeing, but to hearing and feeling as well, and all the other means
we have of perceiving what’s around us. Maybe we don’t realize that what we
have taken to be real is mostly, or even sometimes totally a projection of
our own thinking.
For example, if we see someone we don’t know, who
reminds us of someone who was stupid, we may automatically think of the new
person as stupid. If you see someone who looks like Hitler, do you automatically
think he must be evil? A little child, feeling the love of the man who is her
father will see him as wonderful, even if he looks exactly like Hitler. Are we programmed by stereotypes we see in the news or in movies?
Are our sense organs and brains doing us a disservice
by misidentifying what we experience? Perhaps this is why Jesus said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and
become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew
18:3) Maybe the glory of God is all around us, but we fail to see it because of
the prejudices arising from our own thinking.
If you can stop the programmed prejudging
of your thought processes, and become like a little child, how different will
the world you experience be? If you can stop the chattering of your
mind, for even a moment, and just be
aware of what is really there, can you be totally present and totally aware?
If so, you will experience the everyday world, and your life, as the miracles, the gifts of God, that they truly are!
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