Waking Up from Ignorance

I like this image of The Tree of Contemplative Practices. Probably because I have found it so helpful to remember that this spiritual journey as a whole is comprised of many many moments of practice.  For me anyway, the awakening process is not something that will just happen on its own.  No, without practice, I tend to return, rather quickly, to the automatic thinking and action that was the blueprint of my younger years.

Most recently, I was reminded how writing, including writing in this blog, and reading are contemplative practices for me that help me wake up from ignorance. 

Here I am defining ignorance as used in Buddhism which Lama Surya Das defines in The Awakening of the Buddha Within as

the age-old problem of delusion and confusion. Until we reach enlightenment, we are all at least a little bit ignorant of the truth or out of touch with reality.  We don’t perceive the truth of how things actually are directly, without distortion or illusion.  Instead, we insist on seeing things as we would like them to be.  We tell ourselves stories, and we live in our fantasies.

What is toughest about ignorance though, is that we don’t know we are stuck in it until we wake up from it. I suppose that is why the Ah-ha moments are so breathtaking.  But this reality leaves us with little other option than practice to remedy the human condition and limitation of ignorance.

The other day I wrote about my agnosticism regarding how the universe does or does not conspire to support us on our journey.  What I found though, is in that process of writing and reflection I further woke up to another way of perceiving reality and god. It was like I peeled away another layer of film on a picture window to reveal a clearer worldview.

To me, this is the process of awakening, and it reminds me of an eye exam.  You know where you stand about 12 feet from a poster that has rows of random letters of all size fonts, and you cover one eye and then the other to try to read the smallest font that your particular eye is able to see.  Each time I feel like I’ve gone through another moment of waking up, it is like I’m able to see an even smaller font on the eye exam that was only moments ago completely unavailable to me because I literally couldn’t see it.

There is currently a YouTube video on the internet called “Test your awareness: do the test” that I encourage you to try because it makes this very point in a fun game.  If you have the time, stop right now.  It only takes 1 minute and 9 seconds to do, and I’d recommend you not read any of the descriptors of the awareness test before you click on the link, it kind of ruins the fun if you do.

So stop now, and take the test.   

Did you do it? Isn’t that fun? I love that awareness test because it really makes the point that we human beings are limited.  We do filter out information with one part of our brain without the other parts of our brain even knowing that we are doing it.  That is the reality of ignorance, and its burden.

In my recent blog called “Universe Conspires?” I mentioned the story of Kevin Hines and his suicide attempt off of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, and when I consider the role of ignorance, as in what are my blind spots that I plainly am not able to see right now because my perception is skewed or distorted or hyper-focused on this other thing over here, I wonder about what he missed in his line of sights on the way to the bridge.  Yes we know afterward all the factors that played into his survival, but because we are dependent on his small and limited view of reality prior to his jump, we will never know what acts of grace or kindness were completely missed because of his blind spots- just like the moon walking bear on the YouTube video.

It’s not his fault of course.  Its nobodies.  Saying I or someone else is being influenced by ignorance is not an accusation or a judgment, it is just reality.  It is like the old parable about the 4 men who are all blindfolded and told to touch a spot on an elephant, and none have an idea of what an elephant is.  One blindfolded man is told to touch the ear, the second the tail, and so forth.  Then each is asked “what is it that you are touching?” Of course the joke is each man gives a very specific description of his area of the elephant, but none comes to the conclusion about the larger whole, the elephant itself.

In the story, none of the men are wrong.  Their perception is true for them based on their limited senses, understanding, knowledge, and history available to them at the given moment.  This is how ignorance works, we don’t even know when we are under its veil.  But then wait five more minutes, and all of that could change as our awakening continues to unfold each moment of each day of this spiritual life. That’s the gift of practice. The buried treasure.  As Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton said, “There is in all visible things...a hidden wholeness.”

I love to watch this process unfold in my spiritual reading too.  I had blogged a couple of months ago about a book I was reading by Barbara Brown Taylor called A Geography of Faith: An Altar in the World.  Well, I had put the book down for a little while as I sometimes do with nonfiction- read a chapter here or there and then return to it.  

But then a week ago I wrote a blog on March 22^nd called “Gratitude for the Body,” and the next day I picked up Barbara Brown Taylor’s book and turned to a chapter called “The Practice of Wearing Skin” in which she talks about the very same struggle of embodying my body that I had just written about.  And in the book she offers some fabulous suggestions for practices to shift into more gratitude for the body like praying naked while standing in front of the mirror- please let me know if you are courageous enough to try that!

For me, this is an example of awakening from ignorance.  I did not see that chapter or read that chapter on the body until I was able to see that chapter and read that chapter with a fresh set of eyes, eyes that were able to see the smaller font on the eye exam. 

Yoga expert Seane Corn says this awakening process can also be a gift of a regular yoga practice.  Something that will be freely given if you keep returning to your mat again and again and again.

So for me, I will keep writing, among other practices, because it helps me wake up from the places I don’t even know I need to wake up to.  It’s a paradox right?  The more I accept and observe my limited nature of being human, the more I will experience and observe the infinite vastness of reality and the universe.  It makes me wonder, is human ignorance a design flaw on god’s part or part of what makes human beings so uniquely beautiful and capable?  I suppose in the end it doesn’t matter. The reality is, it is thus, and so I keep practicing.

Do you?