Room with a View

How can we learn about a place we can neither travel to nor see?

Carlo Rovelli

 

It is a common familiar image now, the Earth, a blue marble floating in the middle of space, and our place tiny amidst the infinity of space.  For millennium, people had no conception that this might be the case, no image of Earth from outer space.  Why would they when everything around them seemed solid and flat.  The physicist Carlo Rovelli recently pointed out that someone had to imagine this entirely new perspective for the first time, moving beyond the limits of what was known to conceive of an entirely new image of the Earth and our place in it. 

 

Rovelli writes, 

 

“Anaximander is the ancient Greek thinker who figured out that the sky is not just above us; it also continues under our feet, and the Earth is like a stone floating in the middle of the void. This is the first and maybe the greatest of the cosmological revolutions. He had the courage to imagine what the Earth would look like from an immense height: a spectacular change of perspective.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/opinion/black-holes-science-imagination.html

 

It was the same for the ancient mystics of the axial age who living some six to eight thousand years ago took this leap of perspective to imagine something new and true about reality that had never before been conceived. For them, it wasn’t the infinity of space that attracted their attentions and imaginations, but the infinity within.  Through spiritual practices, grace, and mystery they unlocked the hidden doorway to the inner presence, call it God, reaching back out to sustain and unfold our very lives. This was not the God of the sky but the God of consciousness and awareness emanating from within.

 

As spiritual seekers, we are pilgrims on this inner path, our destiny a new consciousness of the sustaining and manifesting divine presence within. This journey is more about letting go and surrendering than accumulating and accomplishing. We find our next steps through trial and error, in the dark unknown.  No one can take this journey for us nor lead us to this destination. It is solely and intimately ours for the undertaking.  It requires persistent and devoted practice, courage and faith over a long period of time.  Most are not up for this challenge.  Distracted by the promises for happiness in material means, we let a deeper experience of life pass by on our way to the next thrilling thing to consume or hoard. 

 

In the same article Rovelli says,

 

“I think that the answer is to grope for a delicate balance — a balance between how much of our previously accrued learning we take with us and how much we leave at home, freeing ourselves to reconsider what we think we know…..If we leave too many things at home, we lack the tools needed to forge ahead; if we take too many, we fail to find the paths to new understanding.”

 

While Rovelli here is speaking about the journey of science, I think it also applies to this spiritual path.  To grow spiritual understanding, we must move beyond what is comfortable and known, discerning what has become an obstacle on the path and letting it go, when it is time, to move forward.  Letting go of outworn habits, reactivity, grasping, tired ways of thinking can feel like sky-diving without a parachute until we realize there is no end to the falling.

 

I think it must be remarkable to have a thought that is new, that has not ever been thought of before by a human about a truth.  This is what David, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed and other sages and mystics brought forth to us.  New understanding of the depth of our lives, our capacity for more tenderness and compassion for ourselves and all others, the chance to catch a glimpse of the magnitude, preciousness, and generosity of life before we die.