An Epiphany

AN EPIPHANY

For Christmas last year, my wife bought me a beautifully illustrated anthology of creation myths from around the world. It was, I think, my favorite gift, and each night we would read one myth aloud before retiring. Halfway through one of them, a fantasy came over me about someday reading these to our children-yet-to-be. I stopped reading and told Cherrisa of my vision. I had a very warm feeling about this. Cherrisa, however, said "Except that it might be confusing to them."

"Why so?" I asked.

"How will they know which one is true?"

Without thinking, I replied "But they are all true." Suddenly I was struck by what I had just said, and I have kept it as a treasure to ponder ever since. I recognized it as a truth, but I didn't really know why. Being fond of ambiguity (Anglican, you know) I didn't worry about it, but now and then something will strike me and returning to that moment with new knowledge has brought me much closer to understanding consciously what my intuition told me was true.

Reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters, for instance, really blew me away. The reduction of matter to "patterns of energy" and what's worse, "tendencies of patterns of energy" at that! The implications for quantum physics' "potentialities" far exceeds the scale of electrons and muons. This has blown "potentialities" wide open for the world at large and philosophy/religion in specific. Your example of firewalking last Wednesday is a perfect example. Another is acupuncture. It cannot function by western standards and understanding. Fortunately the Chinese did not feel obligated to ask us our opinion when they were developing their art. That patients routinely undergo major surgery in China without anesthesia of any kind--or pain--is a slap in the face to western medicine and a well-deserved one at that.

How, then, are we to approach religion and its sister, myth? For the people of a certain culture, it is, perhaps, solid reality--and the western mind must acknowledge that it is at least a "potential" reality, and treat it as such. It is difficult for us to feel comfortable in the sea of ambiguity this requires us to swim in--but it is equally liberating. And that is the "satori" moment, for us at least, when we stop struggling with the need for solid answers and let our souls become truly free in a universe of infinite potentiality.