How can we know where we are? There seems a refusal in our contemporary world to see anything below the surface. Merton put it like this: ‘All we will see is the image, the image, the absurd image, the mask over our own emptiness’. In psychotherapy the manifest level is only of interest where it points to what might be going on underneath at the latent level. Similarly in religion and spirituality if we just keep to the surface then the whole thing is merely a presentation – a show rather than touching the depths of our inner being.
It’s the whole question of the Emperor’s new clothes and so we need the eyes of the child to see below the brand and the logo and the mission statement; to see underneath the glossy exterior and the judgements that are made about appearance, forms of apparent success and so on. Perhaps that’s why it’s easier in nature… there are the birds being birds and the flowers fulfilling their destiny as flowers. ‘Consider the lilies’ – yes and see in them the essence of the life force. How to get back to a sense of connection with nature? How to let go of the image and see our deep connection with all living things?
Try this online exhibition – touching the core…