The deer. I think they’re appearing now in my dreams, messengers of some sort. I wouldn’t have seen this one, distant as he was and a wall of twigs between us, but for the way he leaped up the hill. I stepped to my side to get a better view and when I looked again, he was gone. In a flash. Just like that. But I felt him. So I stood still, barely breathing, staring. And so did he, from right there, by the fallen log, still as could be, barely breathing, staring right back. A flicker of acknowledgment shot between us, signaling our respect for one another. Then we moved on.
A shaft of late afternoon light spills across the fallen sycamore leaf, its broad ivory underside facing up from a bed of crumpled maples, and a single gray maple resting atop it, tenderly, it seems, grace notes of red, green and yellow flowing past, the whole of it breathing some soft, nostalgic song. It carries me into a dream of a quilt that covered my great grandmother’s bed, where I would fall asleep gazing at its patterns and the stitches, so tiny, so carefully placed, while she cooked in the kitchen, quietly singing that her bonny lies over the ocean, over the sea. I watch my mind place the image of these November leaves atop my grandma’s quilt, and I nod, smiling.
“Nesting bird,” some voice said. And after that I couldn’t see it any other way. Words do that. They hold things fixed in time. “Of course you would see nests and birds,” another voice, more from the left brain side of things, said in a most reasonable tone. All this chatter! I look again. I know it was once a great tree. I photographed it myself. I think how it took tens and tens of years and weather to render this design And here we are, gazing at it, our imaginations weaving stories, the whole of us awake with interest and appreciation.
I was thinking the other day about how each of us really does live in our own, unique Reality Bubble. It’s hardly a new thought. But lately it’s struck me with a new clarity.
Oh sure, there’s the world we all more or less agree on: That’s a tree. The sky is blue. This is a table. Some call this layer of reality “the materium.”
But when it comes to remembering things we observed, or interpreting events, we step onto some shaky ground. Ask any police officer who’s ever taken an accident report from eye witnesses. Three people will give three different accounts. We even have to watch sports replays to decide whether the officials made the right call.
And when it comes to what we believe about, say, gender, or religion, or politics, well, watch out! The ground gets more than shaky. It sort of resembles quicksand, where, before you know it, you’re sunk.
I took a psychology class once from a professor who had a special interest in belief systems. He found three guys in different mental hospitals, each of whom believed he was Jesus Christ, and he had them all transferred to the same hospital and assigned to the same support group. His hope was that their delusions would be lessened. But instead, they began by aggressively arguing with each other about which of them was holier. And finally each found ways to convince himself that the other two were, in one case, insane, and in the other, dead and being operated by a machine.
(The professor wrote about their encounters in a book called The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, if you’d like to read the whole story. )
The primary lesson the professor brought away from the experiment is that we strongly identify with our beliefs. When they’re threatened, we respond defensively because it feels as if we, personally, are being attacked. We each believe that what we believe is the true reality. And our brains work hard to support our beliefs. They carefully scour all incoming data and present us with the evidence that matches our beliefs, filtering out the stuff that doesn’t.
And because people who hold beliefs that are similar to ours reinforce our identity, we tend to like them better than people whose beliefs are different. And the more different the beliefs are, the more disturbing we find the person who holds them.
If we want to create more harmony with others, a good place to start is by recognizing that we aren’t our beliefs, and our beliefs don’t necessarily provide us with a true picture of the way things really are. Truth, as the saying goes, is under no obligation to conform to our beliefs.
Other people aren’t their beliefs either. But they probably feel that their beliefs are a part of their identity, just as we tend to feel that what we believe is an intimate part of who we are.
Beliefs are just thoughts, repeated so often that we assume they must be true. Maybe they’ve been repeated to us since our early childhood. Maybe we picked them up in school or adopted them in college because they seemed to have so much proof behind them. And our brains have been bringing us evidence ever since to reassure us.
Sometimes, if you’re very tactful, persistent, and patient, you can provide enough evidence to someone to persuade him to accept something that you believe in place of a belief he has held to be true. But his first response is likely to be defensive. (And later, he may conclude that you’re either insane or dead and being operated by a machine!)
But on the whole, the most harmonious way to deal with those who hold beliefs that differ from yours is to recognize how crucial our beliefs are to our sense of being, and to respect that each of us is entitled to his or her own view of things.
Look for the things on which you can agree, and agree to disagree on the rest. And above all, try not to take offense when someone’s beliefs are different from your own. If you’re really brave, try looking at things from their point of view. Who knows? It may turn out that you discover your own view needs some alteration. Reality is, after all, a very complex and mysterious place.
I wait for these, these sycamore leaves and oaks, the last to fall, some of the sycamores larger than my face, all of them larger than my palm, and so rich in color. This is the quilt’s top layer, the topmost shield against the snow, coming soon now, snow. But not today. Today is still warm and the burnished umber of the fallen sycamores and oaks spreads itself beneath the tall trunks of the mighty ones who bore them. I breathe their fragrance, their songs rustling around my ankles as I walk.
It doesn’t matter that everyone else has shed their leaves. Someone needs to carry joy flags into the winter. Let it be you.
Sing, even though the choir has gone silent. Be brilliantly awake while everyone else Is lost in dreams. Skip when the walkers shuffle. Dance when the fearful ones lean against the wall. Believe in Yes even when all around you are lost in the illusion of No. Let your heart brim with gratitude and with praise for life even when the world seems drenched in sorrow.
Someone needs to carry joy flags into the winter. Why not let it be you?
I have a card on my desk with words hand-printed: lines, form, textures, colors, rhythm, patterns, motion. I say them to myself as if they were a mantra, to train myself to pay attention. Everything has something to say. I’m driving through cornfields on my usual Wednesday trip, and today the fields boast only stubby stalks. The harvest is in. I note the color, the texture. I turn onto the main road, two-lane, decently paved, and watch late autumn flow past me. A mile or so down the road, I pull off to stop to see the wetlands on this fine day in mid-November, and as I step from my car the sky grabs me and my mind is shouting like a child: Lines! Form! Texture! Colors! Rhythm! Patterns! Motion! And that child-self twirls in the grass as I take pictures.
Simply ask, then be at ease and go about your way knowing that, in its perfect time, your request will be granted. Keep your heart light, your mind open, your trust a matter of course. Then surrender, and go where you are led. Believe this. The earth is filled with goodness, and jewels gleam everywhere.
We try to make sense of things, to find something familiar, something we can name. So words come – reptile, bird – and they wind themselves into stories large as legend, their meanings rolling down through mists of time. I see. These lines and patterns and textures and hues are for gazing, mandalas to mirror your mind.
The first assignment on the first day of the second year of winter studies was to look around and see what what I could see and as a subset of this, perhaps to notice how I was experiencing the experience. It was all, I can tell you, far richer than I expected. Take for instance the way I felt drawn to this tree, to this cut section of it that I’ve watched for a couple years now. It was deep in shadow, but even so, the colors of its resin ran down its surface as if they were made from melted crayons. I held my breath as I photographed it, feeling honored to be allowed. This is a ceremonial vision drum. As I gaze into its smoky depths I imagine dancers silhouetted before a great bonfire and hear the rhythm of their drums. Then I blink, and think, laughing, that this is only Day One.
