Coming to Know Reality
Seeing the fundamental invalidity of our fragmented worldview
You may remember the instructions Marcus Aurelius gave himself: “First thing every morning tell yourself: today I am going to meet a busybody, an ingrate, a bully, a liar, a schemer, and a boor.” (Meditations 2.1)
Of course, Marcus didn’t stop there. He was advising himself to get ready to look beyond appearances so as not to become an angry, judgmental boor himself: “I know that these wrong-doers are by nature my brothers, not by blood or breeding, but by being similarly endowed with reason and sharing in the divine. None of them can harm me, for none can force me to do wrong against my will.”
In short, Marcus understood that appearances—a world of separate beings clashing in discordant ways—were far from the whole story. Mind training was required to avoid sinking into the muddle of sensory appearances.
Millennia later, in a letter to a father struggling to cope with the death of his son, Einstein saw the fundamental invalidity of our fragmented worldview:
A human being is part of a whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and his feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us.
Why is this delusion a prison? Our deluded consciousness, Einstein explained, is “restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.” Pointedly, Einstein continued, “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison.…”
Einstein counseled that we free ourselves from this prison “by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Then, importantly, Einstein urged compassion for one’s self as we set out on our journey, for “nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation of the foundation for inner security.”
As prisoners of our personal desires, we struggle to achieve that which we believe will make us happy. Our focus narrows. We strain to be in control. Others are perceived as objects to use or overcome. The paradox is, in this process, we usually move further from our goals. As we treat others as objects, they resist us. We become like little cartoon figures, flailing against a world that all too often seems to be opposed to our personal desires. And when things happen to go our way, as they sometimes do, we say, You see, all the effort was worth it. Yet, despite our attempts, we feel insecure.
As you become more aware of the antics of your mind, you might notice a nasty hangover to what seems to be your righteous judgment of others or circumstances. (Judgment is not the same as discernment. For example, you don’t have to hate a criminal to stop them from harming others.)
Marcus and Einstein point to the need to look beyond appearances of fragmentation to see underlying connectedness. Many times, I have written about how important this is for our daily lives. For example, consider this essay:
Freeing ourselves from the prison of our thoughts is so crucial to the quality of our lives that it is important to consider this challenge in as many ways as we can.