Lifethrum - The Wall

 

1. The Wall

 

 

It was like the slow turn of a monstrous tide where even the extreme high water mark was eventually submerged under flooding water and I was caught up in a tumbling wave with no shore in sight. Although the lack of security was frightening initially his simplicity, common sense and understanding somehow provided a haven from which to reach out and explore his world that was quite different to anything that I had encountered.

I was only twenty-two when I met him and when everything I knew was quietly but effectively turned inside out and upside down. I came to know him by many names but they were only names not an identity. The substance of his messages or teachings was always paramount which was generally direct and uncomplicated. I loved his blunt candour for from the day I met him he projected an openness that I found utterly captivating. Even though he was aware that some would find his directness unpleasant or even objectionable it was meant to remove the possibility of any misinterpretation. However when he considered that frankness would hinder his purpose he would be far more guarded and considerate of the person he was addressing added to which his astonishing insight was quite disarming.

Shortly after our first meeting he was discussing various topics with friends when quite unexpectedly he turned to me and remarked quite categorically, that it seemed to him that I was living what I imagined to be a comfortable life. He equated it to me lying in the sun in the long grass and gazing up at a wall that was standing in front of me and saying to myself that one day I was going to climb the wall. His suggestion was emphatic and direct. “Why don’t you climb that wall now?” It came like a bolt out of the blue for I had little confidence in being of any spiritual worth and felt, at the time, that I would simply observe him and absorb what I could from what he tried to portray or illustrate.

I am also a person who needs things to be spelt out as riddles tend to confuse me and I invariably draw the wrong conclusion from them. His emphatic suggestion was such a riddle that initially did leave me confused, In time, however, I came to know the wall as the bar to my coming to any sort of understanding regarding myself, the universe, spirituality or anything that lay beyond the walls of what I could see, hear, taste, touch or feel. His riddle clearly pointed to a need for action centred on learning. I came to grasp, clumsily at first and then with growing assurance, that if there was to be any sort of spiritual growth it was first necessary to be open; open to the unknown, open to the foreign or strange, open to the unexpected, open to opposite opinions and more particularly open to myself. Closed minds, he claimed, only produced conflict and truth could not take root where there was either inner or outer conflict.

 

He took it as read that we wanted to know the nature of truth and to meld ourselves to it. He explained that experience would provide knowledge while practice would turn knowledge into understanding and that understanding was the only reality worth striving for. Understanding stands apart from all other spiritual aims for it has no definition and leaves egotistical desires nothing to hook into. He stressed, ‘Do not attempt to put form to understanding as in so doing you give it legs with which to walk away.’ He said that although it appears to have little substance if we look honestly at ourselves understanding is what all of us seek one way or another. Understanding grows from the tiniest grasp of things to the mightiest when nourished by honesty and awareness. With practice understanding automatically becomes the root base of wisdom and truth which once gained can in no way be eradicated or removed.

 

 

 

Thoughts for the road. 

 

The wall of indifference stands foursquare across the path to knowing.

Don’t ‘hit the wall’ climb it.

Climb one step at a time up the rungs of honesty and awareness.

The smallest insight is the seed of the most potent.

The world of the senses embraces an extraordinary senselessness.

There is no sense in the cosmos. It stands alone and complete.