Passages Vol. 4: New Self New World

Where does stress come from?

In his revealing book, New Self New World, Philip Shepherd provides a clue:

“Our thoughts buzz and bounce inside our craniums; we can see the world and hear it and think about it as our ideas go around and around in circles, but we have forgotten how to ‘be’ in it.”

How often do you pause to simply be in the world, rather than in your head? For most, it’s not very often!

This is important because, as Shepherd explains, “Our stories create our realities.”

We assume reality is fixed, a given, so to speak. This is a false assumption. Our thoughts create a map of the world. But that map is only a representation and not the real territory:

“Once we acquire knowledge of something, our knowledge remains fixed and independent of the thing it represents until we choose to amend it. In other words, it exists as a duplicate. The energy of the world is in the process, moving forever onwards; the duplicate is a static scheme. Such schemes are never neutral. We construct and return to our duplicates because they are meaningful to us.”

Have you ever shared an experience with someone and later remember it entirely differently, to the point of wondering how they could possibly be so blinded by their biases? This is not an infrequent occurrence. We encounter the world not as it is, but as we are. It’s good to remember that when in conflict with someone who interprets things differently.

“We have all met people who wear their assumptions like bulletproof vests.”

If our natural state is to see the world through the prejudicial eyes of Self, how do we learn to expand that view?

Phillips has a couple of suggestions:

“The abiding reality of life, the abiding reality of anything, is to be found in its relationship to the whole...Being is a unity indissolubly bound by interrelationships.”

“It turns out, paradoxically, that the main issue in ‘knowing thyself,’ one that proves as rich as it is inexhaustible, is how to center yourself in the world of the present.”

When completely present, we aren’t thinking about things. In those moments, perspectives and context soften, and we see the world from a more neutral vantage point.  Thoughts take us away from what is happening right now. Thoughts are incompatible with presence. When present, Self isn’t the grand interpreter of experience.

“You can either be ‘who you know yourself to be, or you can be present. One or the other, but not both.”

This matters because the world we encounter through the lens of Self can sometimes be unbearable. I discovered this when faced with the devastation of our son’s incapacitating stroke. This circumstance weighed on my heart like a stack of bricks. During his four-month hospital stay, I would wake up in the morning momentarily happy, only for reality to smack me back down.

The only way I found to address this unrelenting pain was to accept it, stop thinking about it, and shift my attention to the beauty of the moment.  When I let go of thoughts, peace ensued. This is The Secret Within.

So far, I’ve only covered the first 21 pages of Shepherd’s 500-page book. Let’s go ten pages further:

“The self and the atom are both classically understood to be ‘stand-alone’ units that interact with other ‘stand-alone’ units.”

This is a great misconception. In its place, Shepherd proposes A Universal Law:

“…existence is contingent on relationship, and nothing exists except through its interrelationships with everything else.”

If this is true, then why does our reality feel so isolated, especially during difficult times?

The issue is our habit of viewing the world through the thought-created Self. In troubling circumstances, the Self can’t resist touching its wounds. But when we let go of painful thoughts, we free ourselves from the bondage of circumstances. This takes practice, and we shouldn’t wait for a crisis to begin. A routine practice of presence undisturbed by thought introduces us to a new reality, which brings up a story:

Last autumn, while vacationing with our granddaughters on the Oregon coast, Adalyn, then five, asked, “What is reality?” As adults, we could rephrase that question to: What is my reality?

I didn’t have a simple answer for her then, but I’ve been thinking about it. Revisiting Shepherd’s book helped:

What is Reality?

Reality has three parts: an inside, an outside, and the touching.

The inside is made of things we can’t see, like our thoughts and feelings, including what we want and whether we are happy or sad.

The outside is made of things we can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.

Here’s the really amazing thing: the outside and inside don’t exist until we touch them.

It’s like this: When you turn off the lights, cover your ears, and pinch your nose closed, the world disappears. But when you open your eyes, open your nostrils, and listen… the world reappears.

Things become real when we touch them.

Everything is like this: your sister, your cat, your house (which you can’t see until you go inside), and even the whales swimming in the depths of the sea.

Reality is made of things that touch.

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Our reality expands when we open ourselves to relationships that surround us, now, and now, and now!

True presence liberates us from the devastation of painful circumstances; we are never independent or alone (we only think we are).

A new self and new world appear when we touch.

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