Lessons Gleaned from the Changeable Nature of Human Beings

 

During my afternoon walk today, I found myself grappling with a lifelong experience of human beings as highly unpredictable and changeable. Perhaps others don't have a similar experience, and I accept the fact that it may simply be part of the "karma" I've been given. Maybe I was a very fickle and unreliable person in a previous life, and now I am getting a dose of my own medicine! In any case, it seems to me that people are often non-communicative for no apparent reason, by turns BOTH engaged and distancing, and highly changeable in attitude. My guess is that others might also say the same about ME.

What I'm learning from all of this is that the ego-self of both myself and others is actually quite illusory, or at least impermanent and shapeshifting. I find liberation from frustration when I begin to see both others and myself - together with my own expectations of others - as a PLAY of sunlight diamonds on the vast lake of consciousness. Our egos are like echoes resounding against a canyon wall, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

Ultimately, the shapeshifting nature of human beings teaches me that only three things are real: the transcendent God, the immanent Goddess - or Sophia - and the position in the middle, which Emerson called a "transparent eyeball." Each one of us is simply a unique aspect of that "seeing" positioned in the middle, whereby God gazes upon Goddess and Goddess gazes upon God. Or, to put it in more Buddhist-sounding terms, this is a seeing in which FORM appears out of emptiness, and EMPTINESS appears smack-dab in the middle of form. When I realize this great truth, then neither my own ego nor that of others seems to matter very much at all. Here, it is the very changeability of we as human beings - and the resulting frustration - that COMPELS me to let go and become transparent to THIS Reality.

Photos: (Top) Watson Lake, Canada Geese and the foothills at sunset, Bellvue, CO, November 17, 2014; (Middle) Last light and reflections on the Poudre River, Bellvue, CO, November 17, 2014; (Bottom) Charred Ponderosa Pines, Galena Burn, Lory State Park, CO, November 15, 2014