Stepping Outside

byCashPro

588 followers

13 years ago

Stepping Outside:

“Seeing is believing.” And who’s to deny this is true? A huge percentage of our interaction with the outside world is taken up by our ability to see, and therefore, is the primary basis for our belief system.

However, let us consider the opposite: “Believing is Seeing.” There are those who already understand this fully.

Those who have seen past the physical plane our attention is normally focused on. At some point every one of us has experienced the sensation of precognition, of hearing someone’s thoughts, of making connections that help us exactly when we need it, or being drawn to circumstances that lead us to amazing destinations in areas we might never have ventured ourselves.

Believing is Seeing: so they say, and what do they know? They have been outside. They’ve summed up their courage, and they’ve journeyed outside. Here you sit with their messages slipped under the door that read, “Come on, outside! The weather’s amazing! Just open the door!”

With your eyes accustomed to the darkness in the room, the light spilling in under the door is so brilliant it hurts them just to look at it, and you tremble to think how blinding it must be outside, and you are frozen with fear and doubt even with the evidence of loving intention the warm, inviting glow casts about the room.

You remember a time before when all was in darkness, and there wasn’t even the slightest hint of an outside. The hard walls found around the room were your world, and their distance was comforting to know. To know the darkness was small enough to recognize was powerful, and the occasional reach into the inkiness would reassure you that they hadn’t moved. There may be monsters in the room, but they can't be a big and scary as those outside, can they?

But now, there’s light and the sound of people coming in from somewhere, telling you it’s okay, the outside isn’t as dangerous as you think, or as difficult. They tell you their arms are outstretched and ready to catch you, to help you, to guide you, if only you’d just open the door.

And you hear them right down to the bottom. Your deep-down insides hears what they’re saying. It can hear the quiet language of their ‘deep-down insides’, and recognizes the truth; what pure loving intention sounds like. It sounds like completely abandon, trust, and willingness. It sounds like kinship.

But, the body remembers the sharp points around the room that couldn’t be seen before the light came. It remembers the pain of finding them unexpectedly, it remembers fear from not knowing where those points were. And, now, the light from outside has given them form, has protected you from those points in the darkness, so you feel safer here inside the room, as long as that light is coming in, from the crack under the door. But, the door is the darkness of the outside. It is the unknown. The points hidden outside are there, you know they are, and how are you going to avoid them if you are blinded by the light?

Those lovely voices; will they really take your hand and guide you? Are they speaking the truth when they say that your vision will return and you will be rewarded with sights unimagined and unimaginable from inside your darkened room. Will you believe them? Could they be sirens, beauty and promise beyond belief until visible, their ugly intentions revealed only when it's too late, and they have you in their clutches?

Could be, maybe not, but outside is the world beyond that which you know. Your purpose is to stamp your own opinion onto it, to add your heart’s experience to stretch the experience of the universe, to make it grow and become more than it is, right now. We fill the universe with our opinions and we are rewarded by more and more in the universe for all to ponder in a universe that is a little more than it was a moment before.

The outside is scary. No doubt.

Here’s what we forget sometimes.

The measure of success is directly proportionate to the size of the problems we can fix. Inside that room, the problems can only get so big, and therefore your success is limited. To stretch your arms, to ‘expand your horizons’, you must open that door and step outside, and see that little room you’ve been in for so long for what it has always been: a prison cell with the lock on the inside. Even with those that love you beckoning you, only you possess the key to your freedom. In a sense, your life is just a series of ever-expanding rooms that you need to learn to navigate and become comfortable with.

It is always your decision when to 'graduate' to the next room.

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Changing the way you look at things is an easy way to think “outside the box”, so to speak, about everyday problems and situations. We are so used to using our limited perceptions, that we tend to forget there are other ways of seeing the same thing, and those different views could lead to different solutions, not to mention expanded horizons. At the very least, it makes life more interesting!

Here are a few ways to begin to change your perspective of everyday life. Please be intelligent about safety when practicing any of them:

1. Cover one eye and carefully explore the spaces around you. Just losing their normal 3-dimensional way of seeing is enough to make some people dizzy. That might suggest a very limited 'view' of the visual world. Break the habit of believing the viewable world is always the same. What is real to you often depends on how you see it. Unless you are conscious of your own ability to interpret your senses, you will be trapped in the one that gets to you first. Or worse, that which others have told you is true.
2. Take something that bothers you a lot, and defend it adamantly: This isn't giving in to someone else's opinion. This is to practice your ability to decide for yourself what your opinions are. Granted, this is not an easy exercise, but it will open you up completely to being tolerant of the opinions of others. By example, you will be able to show that differences in opinion can lead to twice the opportunities to learn. If you can, check out "A Quality of Mercy." The Twilight Zone, episode #80 from Season 3.
3. Imagine looking through the eyes of your baby/pet. This is like covering one eye. Most people are visual enough to make this a pretty easy exercise. The trick is to stay in the 'baby view' as long as you can. A few seconds is interesting, but a few minutes could give you a completely new idea of the attitudes behind your surrogate pair of eyes, as well as to further connection with him/her.
4. When looking at something really big, examine a very small part of it; look for any re-occurring patterns: A wise man once said, 'regardless of scale, nature repeats itself.' This axiom can be found in so many instances throughout life it's quite astounding. And once you see the connection between the very big and the very small, you can begin to see that there might very well be the same kinds of connections throughout nature, and therefore life.
5. Blindfold yourself in a public place. (Please, assistance required!): This one is obvious. You want to try depending on your other senses to do what you would normally take for granted. Not enough? Throw on a pair of earphones to simulate difficulty or inability to hear and experience your attempts to receive a perception of your surroundings. If you’re worried about looking foolish in public, just put on some sunglasses over the patches, or try this out in the privacy of a friend's home. The surroundings should be at least a little unfamiliar.
6. Imagine being an alien from another planet, here to understand human behavioral patterns: Try to disassociate from the human race and stop trying to take everyday typical patterns for granted. Ask why they do that, and you might begin to notice a lot of interesting things about us! Obviously, I'm not suggesting that you become effectively anti-social. This is about becoming a conscious observer, stepping outside the role of a placated participant. Remember, this is only an exercise in changing your perspective.

Again, please exercise good judgment while attempting these exercises. I don’t want you bumping into light poles, or wandering out into traffic!

The more we learn that we actually have control of our individual perceptions of life, the more we can decide for ourselves how much of it we decide to appreciate. With more control always comes more confidence and thus more happiness.
Good luck!

Light, love, and the strength to be more.

Michael B.