The box....the box is a place that we all generally choose to be. It's comforting. It fits us just right. It allows us to feel good about the decisions we make in our lives. What is this box? Where is it? Well, in reality, it is nowhere but in our minds, hearts and actions. We only see the box when we begin to talk or act at the very edge of the box. We live in a series of boxes. Like a Russian matryoshka doll, it is hard to find out if we are on the innermost or outermost edge of the box. The box is our tool for defining reality. If within your box, you don't believe something is or can happen, it probably isn't.
A box is essentially a label. We show up at the conference of life with our name tag, "Hi, I'm so and so." I'm a carpenter, or a banker or a teacher. I'm a woman, a man..etc We live our lives by rules that are written on the inside of our cardboard box forts. We slip out of one into another area of our box forts as easily as (most of us) slip in and out of our clothes. We are shape-shifters essentially, that have forgotten that the labels and boxes we've chosen to inhabit are simply vehicles for assessing our experience.
Just as one drives a car, pushes their foot down on the gas as hard as s/he can, the individual shouldn't be surprised if their Geo Metro can't go 100 plus miles and hour! The car we drive matters. It gets us from point A to B. My Ferrari can take me faster, but not necessarily farther than a Prius. But this is where the importance ends. The importance of our discernment, these boxes, lies only in quality. That person is black or white, fat or skinny, short or tall. This is a quality, ya know, an adjective. We don't or rather morally, we know that we should not base our behavior or our inner identity based off of superficial qualities.
This is a simple explanation, of course. The larger issue lies in the boxes that are harder to see. We certainly don't always know when we are in a box, especially if it is a box of ideas, insecurities, and virtue. Within our scope of vision we try to find an explanation for our environment that suits are experience of the world. Tunnel vision is what I'm talking about, and tunnel vision usually happens most often when we are stuck within our intellectual self. This might seem counter-intuitive although it is true. I shall explain if you allow me.
Within the mind, we hold a simulation of the world as it truly is, an Augmented Reality. If you don't know what augmented reality is, take a look:
This is one of the newest trends in technological communication. This 'augmentation' changes the interface of how we human beings interact with the environment, the world at large. Our minds naturally do this. We already have an embedded augmentation system; it's called thought.
Example: I go into the store to pick up some snacks. I'm running the grocery list in my head and suddenly, I bump into my friend Sally. I'm talking to Sally because I haven't seen her in a while, and I'm wondering how she's been (not THAT interested, though), all while trying not to forget which aisle I want to venture into after I'm done nodding my head with Sally's latest update. After realizing why I don't hang out with Sally more often, I've made my way to the cookies and chocolate goodies. Wait a moment! They ran out of my favorite sweet! What to do? Now I have to re-organize my ideas about what to do, trick my stomach into being interested in chips or crackers!! Woe is me, right?
Throughout this whole process, there are two (or more) experiences that are happening simultaneously. The main two are what is happening in my mind and what is truly happening in the world around me. I may have wanted to get away from Sally as soon as I remembered how much her speech epitomized a female Ben Stein, but who knows if Sally actually wanted to stay and talk to me either. My mind is the selfish part of my experience. Triggered by the connectivity of the brain and the pre-frontal cortex, my awareness springs forward and is like the individual finger-print that distinguishes me from all others.
My fingerprint, my awareness is distinctive because of the boxes in which I choose or don't choose to inhabit. Why do we live in the boxes? It's how we decode 'the matrix', to put it simply. The mind is designed to create boxes and filing cabinets and folders and classifications. If we didn't have discernment, we would not be able to tell the difference between our computer, our phone or our pen sitting on a desk in front of us. The same principle penetrates our experience more deeply into how we deal with one another, our ability to coexist and communicate.
How can we ever speak about racism if the people most affected by it do not believe that there can ever be a world without it? How can we ever have a real discussion about feminism if it is a foregone conclusion that 'men will always only see women as sexual objects'? How can we ever talk about economic inequality if most of us hide in the box of guilt for what we have or the anger of what we don't have?
We all live in a world of boxes and segregation. This is an inevitable fact. It is NOT inherently good or ill. It is a choice. I believe this is the challenge of man as old as man himself. Wo/Man is born with free will. Our free will, in my belief, is not about the choices we make, it is about the awareness of the choices we make. Osho calls this phenomenon 'Choice-less Awareness' or in other words, Enlightenment (whatever that is). It is as 'the Oracle' stated in The Matrix Reloaded, "You haven't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to understand why you made it." This is my purpose of life, not to make waves but to simply observe them. Of course, a part of me wants to shake up the world, who doesn't? This is also another box we inhabit: ambition. A very western idea. The true challenge for me, in my life is not to resist the river, go with the flow, but never blindly. My eyes are wide open, so much that people think I've had botox, and they open wider everyday.
De-compartmentalization is all about integration. The left hand knows what the right is up to. The mind and the emotions and the body are in sync with the spirit. Live with the boxes, but not in the boxes. Live life in full color with as many dimensions as you wish or go with the blind leading the blind. It is all a choice.
What will you choose?
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