- Every moment of every day, we live in constant judgment
of our fellow man. As we gaze out at the sea of humanity in shopping malls
and airports and movie theaters, we perceive many overt "facts"
about other people: he or she is tall or short, rich or poor, fat or thin,
attractive or ugly. These perceptions arouse polarized emotions of disgust
or pleasure, envy or pity. The attractive woman in her short skirt makes
me "feel good," while the homeless man with no teeth makes me
"feel bad." But everyone I see makes me feel SOMETHING. My neural
processor never stops assimilating the information it is fed through my
eyes. As long as I am awake and present, I stand in judgment of other people.
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- The judgments we dispose on others also fall on ourselves.
How many times throughout the day do I assign guilt to myself because of
my body? I look in the mirror and see a balding head and yellowish teeth,
and this makes me feel "bad." Another person tells me that I
am quite handsome, and this makes me feel "good."
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- Most of us believe unequivocally that a human being IS
the image he or she presents to the world. We have all heard cliches like
"Beauty is only skin deep," but a platitude that reaches the
head often fails to reach the heart. I know that a person is not made less
(or more) by his or her physical appearance. I KNOW it, but I don't BELIEVE
it. I can't look at a an "attractive" person and not feel good;
I can't look at an "ugly" person, and not feel bad.
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- In my home county of the United States of America, physical
appearance is considered perhaps the greatest barometer of a person's worth.
From the day we are born, we are bombarded with imagery of physically exquisite
specimens in the form of Hollywood actors, models, pop stars, and athletes.
With bright shining teeth, tanned flesh, and fat-free bodies, these blessed
few stand as the eminence which the common man seeks to emulate. Those
who look good ARE good; those who look bad ARE bad.
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- This culture which places such priority on appearance
is also the perfect breeding ground for "diseases of affluence,"
or mental illnesses like the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia. It
has been reported that girls as young as 5 or 6 are starving themselves
and sometimes dying in an effort to meet society's standards of physical
"beauty." Other diseases of affluence include a chronic desire
to be "special" or famous, a vicious narcissism which we see
manifested in school shooters and even serial killers. It happens that
76% of the world's serial murderers reside in the USA. (Source: www.freelancestar.com/News/FLS/
2002/102002/10272002/769637 )
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- But what if there is a way to go through life without
perceiving ourselves and others in such a superficial light? Can you imagine
living without the exhausting burden of judging people on the basis of
outward appearance? Would this make you more or less happy?
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- I care about this issue deeply, because it has effected
me at the most personal level. I developed the disease anorexia (once thought
to be endemic to females) before my thirteenth birthday. I consider myself
fully recovered, but like an alcoholic, I must always be wary of the unseen
beast lying in wait at the core of my personality.
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- I give 100% credit for my recovery to one simple fact:
I eventually began to recognize a greater spiritual reality that lay beyond
the world we can see and touch. I came to understand that human beings,
including myself, are more than these walking sacks of flesh and bone called
physical bodies. I learned to function in life without constantly worrying
about other people's perception of me. My worth is NOT determined by my
physical appearance. I need not be thought of as "attractive"
in order to be happy.
-
-
- The greatest turning point for me came at the age of
16, when my parents, aware of my ongoing depression and fearful of a relapse
of my eating disorder, sent me to a "spiritual retreat" in the
mountains of Colorado. I suppose the ideology of the retreat's proprietors
could have been called "new age," although that term is too broad
to do them real justice. We did not sit around burning incense, playing
the sitar, trying to open our "chakras." The "work"
we did was down in the mud and the blood of the REAL WORLD, and it was
not something that most people would do by choice.
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- Every morning, our group drove into the city and visited
a hospice and nursing home facility, where we held non-denominational prayer
and meditative services for the sick and elderly patients. I had not anticipated
this when I agreed to the trip at my parents' urging. If I had known about
it, I very probably would have refused.
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- My first emotions upon being immersed in sickness and
death were fear and revulsion. I remember the odor when I walked through
the hospice's doors, it was a blend of smells that could only speak of
misery: urine, ammonia, cigarette smoke, and underneath, the sickly rich
stench of oatmeal. The leader of my group (my teacher) walked us into the
service room, and I felt electricity coursing through my teeth, the intensity
of my terror was so great. I looked around and I saw dying and miserable
people, most confined to wheelchairs, hooked up to IVs, only breathing
with the aid of tubes and ventilators. Emitting from nearly every patient
in the room were sounds of abject despair, from low and resigned groans
to high-pitched wails of agony. These inhuman sounds cut at me like blades,
and it was all I could do to not bolt from the room with my hands clasped
over my ears and eyes.
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- My teacher walked me to a chair and invited me to take
a seat. She then introduced me to a patient who most likely was the "worst
off" of the entire bunch. His name was Everett, and he could not speak
or apparently understand what was said to him. His eyes, unfocused and
apparently not seeing anything, had the oriental look of a Down Syndrome
patient. His limbs were atrophied from a lifetime spent in a wheelchair.
Everett's tongue lolled lazily, curiously, just under the bridge of his
nose.
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- I reacted to Everett the way that most people would;
I repelled in horror. I averted my eyes to the floor, and wished to God
that I could be anywhere else on earth. I could not imagine deriving any
"spiritual benefit" from this insane and masochistic exercise.
What could be learned by observing such terrible and mindless suffering?
What kind of a God would allow human beings to languish in such miserable
and pointless half-lives? With these thoughts racing in my head and threatening
to overwhelm me, my teacher placed her hand under my chin and gently raised
my head, forcing my eyes to fall on Everett. She leaned forward and spoke
these words into my ear:
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- "Forgive what you see."
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- And that was all it took. The dam completely broke. I
immediately recognized a simple yet hugely important fact: my perception
of Everett MIGHT NOT BE CORRECT. It occurred to me that God would not look
at Everett with fear or contempt or anger or revulsion. I would have to
observe him from a position of neutrality, with all the usual judgments
of perception laid aside. I wasn't required to "feel good" about
his physical condition, but rather to acknowledge that my eyes are poor
tools for determining the truth. I would really LOOK at him, breathe him
in and embrace my discomfort without running from it.
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- So I looked at Everett. Almost immediately, the fear
left me, and a tangible warmth, like an electric blanket, covered my entire
body. I felt an exhilaration akin to spiritual ecstasy. I not only abdicated
my fear of Everett, but I felt an inarguable connectedness with him, as
if we were engaged in a kind of symbiosis. At one point, he turned towards
me, and actually patted my hand, as if to say, "I know that you were
scared, but you're all right now." The lolling tongue and the sounds
of agony did not cause me to repel. I could look at these things and not
feel one way or another about them. They just WERE.
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- My heart swelled with relief and joy, as the weight of
an enormous burden was finally lifted. I turned to my teacher with tears
pouring down my cheeks, and she said to me gently, "Now you see. Everett
is ESSENTIAL to God's plan."
- But why should this have been a surprise to me?
-
- I continued to visit the hospice facility as part of
the "retreat" over the next few weeks. I developed bonds with
several of the patients, but I always seemed to have the strongest connection
with Everett. It never ceased to amaze me that I could look at him without
fear or even the slightest discomfort. I recognized this as an enormous
step towards real SANITY on my part.
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- In the 12 years since this experience, I have not returned
to a hospice or similar care facility...but the lessons I learned are with
me now and always. I am far from a saint, I still stand in vapid judgment
of myself and others, but I do not see the world as I did before I met
Everett.
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- For most of us, our physical bodies have become tortuous
prisons for our minds. Judging ourselves and others on the basis of physical
appearance, the constant seeking of physical gratification, and fear of
death are all veritable forms of PSYCHOSIS that rob us of all potential
for happiness. If you are nothing more than a body, you are doomed indeed,
as your body can be destroyed at any moment by events you cannot control.
This revelation seems obvious, and it is easy to accept intellectually...but
again, the heart does not follow the logic of the head. We believe what
our eyes tell us unconditionally and absolutely.
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- Whenever I feel myself falling back into the same thought
patterns, when I am repeating the habit of condemning myself and others
on the basis of physical appearance, I retreat to the mental exercise I
used when I met Everett. I will look at myself and the world from a position
of neutrality.
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- I do not have to feel "good" about what I see
in the mirror or in the faces of other people. I must simply recognize
the fallacy of my own perception. Human beings are not their physical bodies.
If I am only seeing bodies, then I AM NOT SEEING THE TRUTH.
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- I believe that the truth is good, the truth is preferable,
and the truth is nothing to be afraid of.
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- http://www.trueskeptic.com/trueskeptic.htm
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-
- Comment
From Jim Mortellaro
- 4-26-4
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- See the young lady. 23 years old. She stands tall. She
has an aquiline nose, beautiful bearing, long, black hair, hazel eyes.
See the beautiful young lady. The one I fell in love with. See her. Feel
her warmth, her enthusiasm for life. Now see her learn to drive, scuba
dive on her honeymoon. See her shoot trap with her man, now her husband.
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- See her pit crew for his racing team. And watch her drive
a full fledged racing RX-7, with a Weber conversion. So fast even I had
trouble keeping the rear end on the ground without the ground effects and
wing on board.
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- Taller than her husband by a half inch. I didn't give
a hoot. She belongs to me and I to her.
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- See her now. Bent over from infirmity, unable to walk
without help from her MS. Dependent now as she was independent before.
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- But she still stands tall. She is still enthusiastic.
She is still everything she always was.
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- On the inside.
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- Her hair graying. Her eyes clouding over from the effects
of steroids used to treat her MS. See her. She's not the same.
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- On the inside.
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- See?
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- Jim Mortellaro
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