Perspective is an entertaining game to while away many minutes in thought experiments.

 

Consider the same event from different perspectives. For example, something very challenging has happened to you.  It could be a death, a divorce, a diagnosis, or anything else.  But it has shaken you to the core, so that you doubt whether you’ll ever be able to find peace again.

 

 

The perspective you are currently using is human and ego-centered. This event is strongly threatening your sense of self,  of who you think you are, or want to be. You may even be thinking of ending your life.  You do not see how you can continue as the self you were, or want to be, under this onslaught.  You are constantly full of fear and anxiety, your thoughts race, you take drugs, you are afraid.

This is the perspective of a being who believes her life is finite and can be ended by anything.

 

 

 

Now take another perspective.  You are a divine being, sent to this plane to face challenges, meet them, and end them for all the fellow beings to come.  No less than that is your brief. You are great.  Nothing can end or touch your life, which is eternal. As a human you may feel like a drop of water somehow separated from the ocean, but as a divine being you know you never left it.

Your return to its endless, enclosing calm is certain, assured, and indeed has already taken place.

How would you act?

 

 

You would remember at every moment who you are, and know that it was impossible to be disturbed. You would look upon the events, the vicissitudes of life, as upon a miniature train meandering like an ant through a far valley, which you gazed upon “silent, upon a peak in Darien.”  You would wear a crown of imperturbability. And your actions?  You would act as inwardly directed, with calm, quiet decisiveness, and – always – with love.

 

 

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

the flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson