Mirrors, Realms, Spheres, Levels, Categories All

Yesterday, I was driving home from work and volunteer litter pick-up along a walkway constructed under a major new overpass project up by the Mall. I was thinking about what kind of take-off on the Gandhi quote (You must be the change you wish to see in the world) that I could see putting up in places where I notice people like to gather and trash public areas. In this lulling preoccupation, I happened to spot a bird standing sideways on a stalk of mullen:

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- which grows wild along country roads out our way. And it made me laugh suddenly, to see this bird perched at a funny right angle to the seed stalk, feeding away. And that got me seeing how my awareness operates on many levels, and how varied they are, and how they don't necessarily inform each other, but live distinctly separate lives and processes. And that got me thinking about how happiness can be very present on some levels, like the sudden instance of me seeing that bird, while being quite absent on other levels, like concern over people who trash public through-ways and what to do to encourage them to be a presence they are actually proud of being in the world.

And then I thought about how there are way deeper levels than that, like the podcast I had been listening to while picking up trash. It was called "The Cruelty of Children", Episode #27 on This American Life -available for free at iTunes Store or at NPR website. I especially thought of Dan, as this first story was about a guy reflecting on his realization that he liked guys, and how difficult that was for this story teller growing up among the teasing and taunting of peers as well as the awkwardness of teachers and culture in general. But actually, his story was quite funny, read more like a dark comedy, and he had a way of really entertaining his audience with his wincing stories. Laughter of recognition, of confession, of relief!

And that made me think of how happiness seems to need its opposites, like hardship, suffering, isolation, confusion, constriction, whatever that essence is that makes happiness feel good as a liberation from all that seems to hem things in, make things feel harsh and difficult to endure. Happiness is the relief from those hardships. Happiness is an aha! after some amount of oppression.

And that reminded me of a theory I have, that this human plane seems to be curiously, cleverly devised to set people into limits that then make happiness show up in contrast to the limits. And we're all sort of experimental limits set into play in order to reap the best bang for our buck of happiness. Like there's a correlation between amount of suffering and how much happiness can come in contrast to it. In other words, if you have a relatively light easy upbringing, then profound happiness may be less likely in contrast. Whereas, if you have a miserable upbringing, then happiness is perhaps bound to show up much more pronouncedly. -There's something perhaps morbid in this dirty little secret, but it might explain why so often it seems the worst personal catastrophes get the most air play. The best bragging rights come from those with the most obvious and outrageous suffering. Happiness stands on the shoulders of mounting suffering.

But back to this piece's title and this theme of the weave of things and how consciousness lives in so many realms and categories and levels and spheres in this hall of mirrors many-mansioned universe we find ourselves in. One's upbringing realm may be seething with sores, while the horizontal bird catches some other sector of our eye's aptitude for that kind of bird/nature amusement. An ongoing story line having to do with a particular friend/relation may be winding a curiously hand-wringing path in some sphere of our preoccupation completely disregarding the upbringing realm or the bird sphere, or perhaps finds ways to integrate them in. The point being, how amazingly we are capable of investing so vividly in all these extraordinary ordinary states of mind that cubby us this way and that, level upon level, sphere next to sphere, all hall of mirrors reflecting things interesting enough, captivating enough, if not exactly happiness cultivating, but lulling us to go further and further in to see what's in there. Or staying out, for fear of the uglies or pains or intolerables. And meanwhile, happiness is sprinkled among it all, like little bright spots, little rings of the bell, little packets of refresh that in and of themselves help to sustain us, animate us, get our tails wagging, even while inner and outer wars may be waging in other concomitant spheres.

We are among a legion of everything with happiness sprinkled among tuned to the frequency of our capacities to see and feel happiness there, even while certain bottles drain dry, and sustenance wains and infinity floods in unannounced and relentless.

How to take all of that in, in any overall sense of how much it makes us happy or not, is a not any easy reconciling. But it does make me wonder, and somewhat wide-eyedly, even happily so.

--Steve