In a Rose Garden

I have been thinking about perception and how as soon as we have more than one person looking at the same thing, each person has a different story, a different truth, a different explanation.  Add to that the mysterious systems humans have created:  information technology, cyberspace, monetary system.  All of these are energy fields.  We can only perceive small pieces of them, and we have varying degrees of skepticism about the reality of what we get from them.  It is not a hard leap from that to understand what the yogis are saying when they say what we receive through the senses is illusory (maya).

We read news articles about the fact that Yo-Yo Ma was not playing at the Inauguration, but just moving his hands over the instrument to a recorded tape.  Why would I believe the news stories more than I would believe what was on the “jumbo-trons” — or if I had been one of the few close in, what I’d thought I’d seen and heard?  Why would I be more likely to believe the Inauguration of President Obama if I saw it on TV than I would the story line of a movie?  How is it that we distinguish between news and fiction, our side of the story v. the other person’s side?

When we emphasize the “reality” of our own perception, we bring ourselves to schisms, disputes, and hurt feelings.  When we let ourselves be skeptical about our own perceptions and know that they are only one aspect of a unity (like the blind men and the elephant), then we can be softer, more open, and less divisive.  I am working on this; it is a challenging aspect of my yoga practice.  What do you think?