Magical
Since I’m house sitting Lucy’s apartment at the moment I am also taking care of her plants. Before she left she planted some seeds that I’ve been watering for the last week on a daily basis. About two days ago sprouts started to break through the soil.
Witnessing this is to me a magical moment. You plant these tiny seeds and you water them and they become alive. When you look at them you feel their lust for life. They want to break free absorb sunlight, they want grow. Nothing is holding them back; it feels like the whole force of the Universe is behind them. They do not contemplate if they should grow or not, they just do it. As long as they have their basic needs taken care of what is water and sunlight they are good to go.
I wonder if we all would be like these plants if our basic needs had been taken care of growing up. For us human beings that would be love and care (care being food, shelter and clothing). For many of us these basic needs were only partially fulfilled. Would we doubt ourselves if they would have been fulfilled fully? Would we have the problems we have if we would have felt loved? Would we feel that the Universe always cares for us if our parents would have always cared for us? Do we always stay a seed if our basic needs are not met? Do we never break free in that case?
I thought about how magical the moment of sprouting is when I walked home cross-town from kung fu on 42nd Street. Isn’t the whole world a magical place? Isn’t it magical that we fly through the Universe on this planet spinning around this sun? How about cars, walking upright, sky scrapers, subways, cell phones, cameras, computers, trees, clouds, men, women, elevators, electricity, food, love, airplanes, oceans, dogs, cats, flowers, mountains, canyons, deserts, snow and whales? Isn’t all of that magical?
The amazing thing about seeing the magic in things around us is that it all becomes beautiful. When I walked home tonight I saw the beauty in all things. Beauty in the skyscrapers, the people on the street, the cars going by, the trees in the park, the homeless person bagging, the trash on the sidewalk and the lights everywhere.
But how can we get there, how can we look at the world with the eyes of wonder? Jesus said something to me really amazing about that:
“At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18
Where is heaven and where is hell? In our minds. Why is a child the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Because a child at least at a very young age has no preconceived ideas about who he or she is and what the world is all about. To become innocent, to become like children again we have to empty our minds, let go of our ideas and believes and we will enter the kingdom of heaven, we will find happiness.
The problem with being an adult is that we think we know what life is all about. We do not look at life with fresh eyes because we feel we’ve been there and have done that before. We label everything and are not even interested what is happening right in front of us. We see a tree for a second and we label it tree. We are not interested to find out more. Why would we? We know what a tree is all about. We learned it in fourth grade. Today we see the same tree we saw back then when we look at a tree today
The idea that we know takes away the magic of life; it takes away the ability to look at the world with fresh eyes. It makes life boring, empty and dull. It takes away heaven and only leaves hell.
"Magical" Manhattan/ New York City 04-22-08 at 06:20 PM
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