Opening To All Of Life

One thing I forget from time to time is that the very fact of existence is a miracle. It is fairly easy to get caught up in the details of day-to-day existence and lose sight of just how peculiar life is from a phenomenological perspective. Kurt Vonnegut captured this well:

"To the as-yet unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.

I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed. They said I was a boy named Christopher Webster, and that was that. They said the year was 1968, and that was that. They said I was in Leeds, England, and that was that.

They never shut up. Year after year they piled detail upon detail. They do it still. You know what they say now? They say the year is 1982, and that I am fifty years old.

Blah blah blah."

- Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick

In the midst of attending to needs and desires it becomes convenient to focus attention on whatever seems most expedient, while learning to disregard or avoid everything else. Consequently, the size of the sphere of experience tends to diminish with age. Every time we say, "I'll never do that again" we diminish our ability to experience. Ultimately this amounts to "painting ourselves into a corner" for the sake of what amount to fairly arbitrary priorities. After all, if we take a look, we may discover that we have abandoned large areas of valuable experience due to decisions made in youth, and that the areas bear re-examination.

Mind you, this is no mere intellectual exercise. I would tend to regard inquiry on the physical and emotional levels as some of the most valuable. One of my most valuable inquiries along these lines happened when I had bronchitis and got in touch with certain emotions I hadn't experienced since childhood. Effectively, I had put myself out of touch with many childhood memories under the guise of "growing up."

I remember that I used to frequently fly in my dreams. From time to time I would wet the bed simply because I dreamed I was getting up and going to the bathroom. Later I learned that such flying was imaginary. Nowadays, if I am lucky enough to have a flying dream, I generally require some prop such as a convenient helium balloon, and I always tend to drift downwards, subject to gravity. I point this out to show that the lack of freedom extends into the world of dreams.

To begin the process of re-examination requires three things:

1. That we allow ourselves to doubt everything that we accept as truth
2. That we learn to observe our experiences without judgment
3. That we learn not to surpress our experiences