When I go walking with Katie’s little Chihuahua dog I enjoy the sniffing stops Dolce makes in our way along Quail Creek. They give me a time to take in the incredible beauty of our midtown retreat. The other day I saw my shadow on the path. It loomed tall and I thought, How often I don’t see my shadow because I don’t think about it. This time I paused to take a better look.
Nothing much to say about it except that it got me to thinking. What if, on any sunny day, I were to look for and not see my shadow? That could be disconcerting, to say the least! It would be a case of noonday or doomsday. My shadow expresses the "real" me inaccurately, but at least it says that I am there.
If all I knew about my shape, size and substance, were what the shadow tells me, I’d be in a sorry fix! As it is, my shadow is just a friendly companion who gets little attention, even though it changes, gets distorted, and lies about the “real” me all the time. I don’t get disturbed over that temporary misrepresentation of me. It doesn’t hurt me a bit. It can’t even exist as a shadow except when my body is present.
I’ve been told that my fleshly body is not the real me but a kind of shadow of me. That’s a thought I’ve pondered often. So, does that mean I am so engrossed in this shadow-body I can’t see my true embodiment? Could these three dimensions be giving me as limited and false an idea of myself as the two-dimensional shadow? Could it be that educated beliefs are all that stand in the way of seeing myself in another dimension that is closer to the truth?
Now, if it is true that my present sense of body is a mere shadow of me, then I’ve got some figuring to do. I ask myself, What if everything I’ve ever learned about my body is as false as the shadow of it? What if my body is only a temporal representation of my presence rather than my true substance? What if it is a mere phenomenon, such as my shadow?
Here is a real stickler of a question: What if it isn't a case of "mind over matter," but rather, Mind instead of matter? How out of the box is that?
Now, I’m just postulating here, but we can see how often in the past humanity has got it wrong as to the truth of things. In major ways too, like the flat earth, the rotations of sun and planets, all the superstitions and follies of the ages. Is it so hard to imagine that we may outgrow this amazing, but false, concept of body we think of as our fleshly identity?
These thoughts are not new to me, but it's time I lift them up to a more practical application. I've cherished them as theory, now I need to give practicality and proof more priority. That time comes with every theory. Letting go of old beliefs can be painful, but hanging on would be like a living death, the death that is sometimes described as "a long rut."
I read and think, and read some more. I find clues in some of the books I’m reading. I talk it over with a few close ones. We speculate, imagine, try on ideas like garments, wonder. Alone in the early morning hours when the world is still asleep and there’s not much my shadow-body can do, I read and think again. It's like a new world I'm exploring and trying to understand just as an infant must do. I pick up The Holy Bible and, as always, it speaks to me. The Psalmist is singing on a distant hillside as he watches his sheep. I sit down beside him to listen and like what he says:
“As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.”
Psalms 17:15
Hi Mom! Fun thoughts to contemplate. But the Blog made me think of this poem you used to read to me from Robert Louis Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verses." Remember this?
ReplyDeleteI HAVE a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
My dad read Robert Louis Stevenson to me when i was young. My favorite poem was the one about the swing. "Oh how I like to go up in the air , up in the sky so blue. Oh I do think it's the pleasantest thing ever a child could do. Up in the air and over the wall till i can see so wide , rivers and trees and moutains and all, over the countryside." i was just thinking earlier how i want to write a paper for class about that poem and swinging in my back yard. You'll be hearing it one of these days. thanks, Joyce. Julie
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