How to Train a Wild Elephant by Jan Chozen Bays MD

Author:Jan Chozen Bays, MD
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2012-01-31T05:36:06+00:00

DEEPER LESSONS

“Looking” is not equivalent to actually seeing. To see something requires not only vision, but attention. The gorilla in the basketball game is not seen because we have been asked to focus on something else, to count the number of passes one team makes. We can drive to work, with our eyes apparently seeing stoplights, but without any conscious awareness of whether we stopped or not.

We are so preoccupied with the things right in front of us that we miss much of what goes on all around us. Children are more aware than adults, whose anxiety has narrowed their lives to “What do I have to worry is coming toward me?” Looking up expands the size of our life to include many more beings (such as birds) and phenomena (such as rainbows) than before. When our vista is wider, our experience of self expands, too. We aren’t so trapped in the small box we call “me, my world, and my worries.”

Looking up helps us broaden our perspective. How does the lady on the fifth-story balcony or the eagle circling overhead see us? When we can see even a little bit through their eyes, through God’s eyes, the claustrophobic closet of our self-obsessed life opens and we get a tantalizing taste of freedom. Looking up is looking out—out of the small box called “my self.” Won’t you step out?

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