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Recognizing Shah Rukh Khan in America

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:53:00 -0400

The detention of Shah Rukh Khan is not the first, nor the most urgent wake-up call the United States has received of late, but it is far more important than many of my fellow Americans seem to realize.

Shah Rukh Khan is one of the most famous men on earth. His fan base probably well exceeds the population of the United States, yet the average American does not have a clue that he even exists.

Furthermore, many U.S. news organizations, in reporting the story of how he was held and questioned for two hours at the Newark, NJ airport, called him the "Brad Pitt" or"Tom Cruise" of Asia.

As if Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, or any American actor is the quintessential measure of a movie star.

The truth is that, at this poin tin time, Hollywood has no actor who compares to Shah Rukh Khan. Very few people possess the absolute and indefinable star quality that this man exudes on the screen. It is my humble opinion that American has not seen a movie star of his caliber since Cary Grant graced the screen with his magnetic presence.

Shah Rukh Khan is a REAL moviestar. In Hollywood what we currently have are actors. Certainly we have some amazing and excellent actors, and I don't wish to detract from their talent or their stellar good looks. I adore Hugh Jackman. Johnny Depp is delicious.George Clooney is absolutely fine.

But Shah Rukh Khan . . . well, what to say? He is one of a kind.

He is like young Krishna - Govinda they called him then - the divine avatar who played his flute in the forest and drew all the women from their beds with his beguiling music. Even though every woman answered his call, there was enough of him to dance with them all.

My sister, who is a Bolly-phile like myself, said it best, I think. She said when she watches Shah Rukh Khan she feels loved. It is the same for me, and billions of other women in the world.

I know Bollywood is an acquired taste for most Americans.

The first time I saw a Bollywood movie I was in an airport in Calcutta and I was appalled, yet fascinated. I found it cheesy and over the top (and honestly, the movie I saw, was not the best of Bollywood by any means). I was accustomed to the realistic and serious bent of American films. Nobody dances in American movies anymore.

John Travolta was the last really good male dancer to appear in an American movie. It has been a long time since Grease first hit the screen.

I have come to love Bollywood for the very over-the-top quality that first shocked my American sensibilities. Bollywood movies are not afraid to be movies. They do not pretend to live in reality. They allow the fantasy to be a fantasy. Everyone dances. Everyone sings.They are a lovely, three-hour escape from earth.

And Shah Rukh Khan, with his soulful eyes and his dimpled cheeks and his wonderful acting and dancing talent, is not just a star in the Bollywood sky, he is the sun. King Khan.

Yet he was detained a questionedat an American airport because of his name, which nobody recognized as anything other than "Muslim" and therefore "threatening."

Racial profiling is a fact of life in this country, nevermind that most Muslims are not rabid terrorists any more than most Christians like to blow up abortion clinics and beat up gay people.

Americans would do well to sit up and take notice of the other countries in the world.

We have a wonderful country, and I am proud of it. But it is not the only country in the world, and we, at the very least, should realize that we exist in a world community.

The greatest part of living in a community is the joy of diversity - the convergence of different minds and different ideas.

At the very least we could have the grace and humility to recognize that there is a whole world beyond our borders, and the people who inhabit this world are important and amazing, too.

The Subtle Meanderings of Morning Glories

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:56:00 -0400

Summer has shifted into its golden phase here on Dragonback Bluff ? right on the edge of autumn and far too hot for sanity.

I have realized of late that I cannot beat the morning glories after all. I am no match for the subtle power of invisibly burgeoning vines. Each morning more have sprouted in the rose bed to replace the ones I uprooted last night. They have stolen with silent stealth the stone footpath around the frog pond and wound their tendrils around the petunias and snapdragons.

If I leave this place they will surely cover the house and dismantle it stone by stone. Last night a spider built a huge web across my doorway ? an amazing feat for such a small eight-legged creature (okay, small compared to a rhinoceros ? rather large, actually, for a spider) to complete in such a short amount of time. A lovely pattern of gossamer, which was destined to be broken apart when the door swung open this morning and two dogs and two cats who would not let me sleep in burst onto the patio. It has been weeks since my last post, mostly due to the fact that I give all my time and energy to a job that does not even pay my bills.

In recent months I have felt that the path my life has taken has been leading me in the wrong direction, mostly due to the Grove Sun. Currently I am knocking at the door of freedom and waiting most impatiently for it to open.

My dear friend JB assures me that one is never really off one's path. He suggested that my sight has merely been obscured by the darkness of this particular stretch of road, and one day I will look up and see that my destination has been in front of me all along. He is a very wise man and there is a knowing at my center that says he is right. But it doesn't always seem so when I am in that miserable office.

My good friend GE recently asked me recently if I had any "superstitions." "Superstitions?" I asked.

"Yeah, things you believe that you know can't be true but you believe them anyway," he said.

"No," I replied.

Superstition is irrational. I have tried to rid myself of irrational beliefs, though others might think many of my beliefs are irrational. To me my beliefs are imminently rational. I don't believe things I know are not true, but I do believe things that other people probably think are not true.

GE illustrated by telling me about another friend of his, "Hooks," (not her real name, I suspect) who thinks it is a good omen if you see a hawk perched on say, a telephone pole. The hawk can't be flying ? it has to be perched.

In that case, I told him, I do have some superstitions. I just never thought of them as such. I believe that certain birds (and other various animals and objects) appearing at certain times tell me something about the currents that are influencing my life. Archetypal energies ? symbols ? the outer world reflecting the inner consciousness. The hawk has an existence ? a consciousness all its own. But it is part of the larger consciousness, just as we all are. And when I see the hawk, it is a reflection of something within my own consciousness as well as a reflection of the collective consciousness (as Jung called it) and the hawk's consciousness.

Lots of people might drive by the same spot and never see the hawk perched upon the pole. It does not exist in their consciousness and is, therefore, not an omen for them.

To me, if I see it, it is an omen of something that is happening in my own consciousness ? a subtle reminder of a certain type of energy or aspect of my existence.

The cosmos, the planet we inhabit, it is all consciousness. Existence is consciousness. It seems to follow that if this is true, then everything we encounter in the world is a reflection of consciousness. The morning glories. The spider web. The Grove Sun. The hawk. The excellent friends. Even McDonalds, GE.

And if the Grove Sun is merely a constructed constraint in the creator's consciousness, there has to be a way to break it open and get to the other side.

Wrapping the Universe in a Trench Coat and Calling It Art

Sun, 31 May 2009 15:53:00 -0400

Sunshine and warmth has finally flooded the verdant bluff I call Dragonback after a chill and rainy spring.

The flowers are blooming in profusion, and it is all I can do to keep the weeds from overtaking everything.

Yesterday I rode to Joplin with my mother to visit the health food store and stock up on seaweed.

As we were making our way back through Seneca, Mo., a picturesque little town with lovely neat houses and brightly flowered yards, she told me that she was having trouble getting though a novel she was reading because the author seemed to mistake triteness for depth.

It is a common literary failing, these days, for authors (many of them in the MFA crowd, I'm sorry to say) to toss in a few heart-warming clichés with cursory observations of "real life" and present the resulting piece as some sort of spiritual revelation.

I try to forbear, but sometimes I become annoyed at these literary authors who think they have discovered some real deep truth and imagine that they can, in well-modulated tones complete with clever turns of phrase, enlighten their spiritually impoverished readers.

As an example, my friend JB and I attended a literary conference at which he was presenting a reading several years ago and we happened to attend the reading of a young author who was all the rage among the literary set at the time. This author, who had perfected the preferred literary reading tone – the calm voice . . . the . . . pregnant pause . . . the . . . measured . . . enunciation – read a story in which a man buys a trench coat at a second-hand store. The trench coat turns out to be God's trench coat, and the pockets are constantly filling with small bits of paper that have people's prayers on them. The man is eventually overwhelmed and we are left to presume that God had also been overwhelmed by the sadness and feckless pleadings of humanity and finally sold his trench coat on consignment. I guess.

It is a singular sort of self-involvedness, I believe, that enables a person to anthropomorphosize God to such an extent that the Universal Creative Force becomes a man in a trench coat who can't cope with people's prayers.

Perhaps the story is so deep that I just couldn't fathom it.

However, I am always suspicious of anyone who thinks they can expose deep truths by explaining them in obvious terms as if to a fool.

Rather than read in well-modulated tones, this author might have screamed, "Hey, you idiots, life is hopeless and God is weak!" Would it have been any less edifying?

Depth is never so obvious or easy to arrive at. Hence the word "depth" as opposed to "shallowness" – the cliché you may see on the surface.

Furthermore, I think the purpose of stories is not to preach or to blatantly spell out what the author believes is revelation.

Deep truths are ever subtle. They are buried quite far down, after all.

A good story should help the reader discover the truth within. It should unfold and allow each reader to find the level that he or she is able to grasp.

Fundamentals of Scripture

Sun, 24 May 2009 13:38:00 -0400

The sky at Dragonback this morning is buttermilk colored, like the old Bob Wills tune.

Growing up in Colorado I thought that was a nonsensical description of the sky. It is always clearer in Colorado, the sky. The clouds have shape and form. The light is whiter. The sky never takes on that buttermilk hue.

Here many mornings have this golden tint and the clouds are milky, undefined, not thick but bright.

When you see a buttermilk sky you know it instinctively. Suddenly the words to a song you heard years and years ago make sense in a way they never could before.

I have been reading more Edward F. Malkowski with my rose-scented green tea this morning. The man is brilliant and I highly recommend his books.

In his latest work, The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt, I have been absolutely thrilled to discover that he is saying things that need to be said about religion.

I had a teacher once who told me that in the earthly plane there are something like 372 levels of spirituality. (Forgive me, Atell. I cannot remember the exact number and I know that number is important with respect to numerology.) At any rate, with 372 as the highest, Atell said, most people on earth are at right about three on that scale.

This explains a lot, particularly about the current plague of fundamentalist Christians ("Christianoids" as my dear friend JB calls them) and fundamentalist Muslims.

To get back to Malkowski, his latest book sets forth the scientific principals behind the energies of numbers in numerology (though he never uses the word "numerology" ? which is an excellent strategy considering the "new age" stigma attached to it).

But what I read this morning was an excellent explication of Exodus with regard to the flowering of higher consciousness, which Malkowski maintains (most astutely, as far as I'm concerned) is the real message of the Hebrew scriptures. Could it be otherwise?

I mean, if it is truly scripture, is that not the whole point?

So many humans on earth have completely misconstrued the scriptures. They have taken them in the basest most materially skewed way they can take them. Literal.

All good literature, no matter how literal, has a deeper context. If it does not it is technical writing, which may explain how to set up your DVD player, but cannot even touch upon any actual deep truth.

Christianoids are reading the Bible like it is a technical manual.

My personal view of everything is that the world around us is archetypal. Our outer world mirrors our inner world. In other words, clues to our inner world may be gleaned by merely looking around at where we live and with whom we associate.

For instance, if I have an owl that calls in my woods every night, it exists as an owl in the woods. But it also exists as a perception of my mind which mirrors a quality inherent in my own conscious existence.

And literature is the human attempt at building an archetypal world like God's. I have said all this in previous blogs.

The thing is, the scriptures, according to Malkowski (and myself and many others) are designed to convey, in a symbolic way, truths that cannot be discerned or understood by the rational part of the brain. Archetypes speak to us on an instinctive level.

Symbols are the language of the spirit.

Stories in the Bible may or may not have been derived from historical facts (some of them most certainly were), but their spiritual significance has to do with the deeper truths that are contained within. This is the most important reason why it is important to have an accurate translation of the scriptures ? and why it is important that we have scholars who are able to read the original words.

Anyway, the point that I keep dancing around is this explication of Exodus that I read in Malkowski's book. It is actually not Malkowski's writing, but a quotation from George Robert Stow Mead's book, Fragments of Faith:

"Egypt is the body; all those who identify themselves with the body are the ignorant, the Egyptians. To 'come forth' out of Egypt is to leave the body; and to pass through the Red Sea is to cross over the ocean of generation, the animal and sensual nature, which is hidden in the blood. Yet even then they are not safe; crossing the Red Sea they enter the Desert, the intermediate state of the doubting lower mind. There they are attacked by the 'gods of destruction,' which Moses called the 'serpents of the desert,' and which plague those who seek to escape from the 'gods of generation.' To them, Moses, the teacher, shows the true serpent crucified on the cross of matter, and by its means they escape from the Desert and enter the promised land, the realm of the spiritual mind, where is the Heavenly Jordan, the World-Soul."

This strikes me particularly because it resonates with the writings of some of the great yogis. I don't know yet if Malkowski has drawn this parallel, having not finished the book, but the symbol of the serpent, which appears in Genesis and Exodus and in older Egyptian texts and architecture is suggestive of the serpent in the ancient yogic traditions as well.

That serpent represents the kundalini energy in the root spinal chakra ? the energy that makes physical reality manifest ? the sexual energy. With this in mind, the story of Adam and Eve takes on a much clearer meaning, I think.

One of the goals of the yogi, if I understand it correctly, is to take that energy, which generally flows downward, and draw it up the spine to unite it with the higher chakras and ultimately reunite it with the source instead of squandering it on physical pleasures . . . More on this later.

Curious Orange

Sun, 10 May 2009 15:21:00 -0400

The Baltimore orioles have been at Dragonback for three weeks now, and they are still, as I write this fluttering brightly in the trees and feeding upon the halved oranges I have left for them.

I think this is an auspicious sign because orioles, in their totemic sense, symbolize sunshine and happiness.

Their mere presence brings much sunshine. The orange of their bellies and throats and the underside of their wings is amazingly brilliant, especially in contrast to the black of their heads and the tops of their wings.

According to my etymology dictionary, which does not trace words back far enough, their name is derived from the Indo-European word for gold, auso, which became aureole, meaning golden halo. One can then see that their name must also be related to aura and aurous etc.

They are like angels, then, in a way. Angels of color. Harbingers of warmer weather to come.

My mother has said to me that she doesn't think many people notice birds, and I agree with her. I don't know how many times people have told me that there are no birds around their homes, when birds are clearly everywhere. Or how many times I have pointed a bird out to someone who absolutely could not see it no matter how detailed my description of where it was and what it looked like.

And maybe it follows, then, that many people don't notice sunshine.

I remember once, when I lived in Santa Fe, stepping outside as evening began to fall to look at the sky because there was a spectacular rainbow that seemed to stretch from one end of town to another. It would have been amazing enough by itself, but its background was the Santa Fe sky, which is the most richly colored sky I have ever seen, and the Sangre de Cristo mountains, so named because they turn pink when the sun begins to wane.

It struck me, as I stood in the parking lot of the yoga studio where I was working and gazed at the rainbow, that many cars were driving by and people were walking everywhere and I was the only one who was looking at the sky.

Damn but it must be frustrating sometimes to be a God with a brilliantly creative mind and an unlimited palette and an obvious yen to bring joy and light to the world – to put on such an amazing display of color hewn from water and sunshine – and to have everyone pass it by without even lifting their eyes to notice.

It makes me wonder how many times I have been so absorbed by my own troubles that I have failed to notice the gift outright – to borrow a phrase from Frost.

It is not murder or adultery, but surely it must be a sin to ignore the manifest beauty that is inherent in this lovely plane.

Telling stories

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:31:00 -0400

On this Sunday at Dragonback, the wind yowls like a cat and the weather mavens predict strong storms.

And on this day I saw my first Baltimore Orioles of the season, lighting and fluttering above the pond.

The rose-breasted grosbeaks, the scissor-tailed flycatchers, and the hummingbirds have all returned as well. And the goldfinches have gone from drab to bright.

Summer is not far behind, and so I have spent my day planting flowers and working on my long-neglected novel.

If you want flowers in your yard, you must clear the leaves and weeds and plant them.

It is true, flowers may grow up anyway. The life force is tenacious, and weeds will jut from unlikely places and bloom.

However, if you wants your favorite flowers in the places you would prefer them to grow, you have to do the work of putting them there yourself.

It is like the difference between falling into a job at a podunk newspaper in a rabidly right-wing town and pursuing a job at say, Smithsonian.

And if you should happen to be a novelist, you must do it regardless of whatever else is going on in your life. Novels do write themselves in a sense, but they need a physical act to manifest in the material world.

Storytelling is a divine calling, I believe.

Sri Paramahansa Yogananda wrote that we are all as actors in a divine film.

A book I recently read described, through quantum physics, the idea that we are all ultimately one observer seeing through billions of different eyes.

So if we are alive only in that we are all God playing billions of characters in a vast story with billions of settings and plots and subplots and surprise endings and strange beginnings, then those of us who are the storytellers must be engaging in a very special kind of creation.

And really we are all storytellers because we are all making up the stories of our lives from moment to moment.

I think that is what is meant in the book of Genesis when God says, "Let us create them in our own likeness."

I am surely not the first novelist to observe that characters often spring into the mind fully formed. They often seem to know the story better than the writer does.

In my experience, characters demand to be given a voice. They demand to be placed in a story. And they pester me until I let them out. Give voice to one, and more will follow.

Is that how it is for God? Is God's mind full of characters clamoring to be released into being?

Personally, these days I often clamor to go back. But then, this has not been my favorite chapter.

It will, however, provide excellent fodder for fiction.

The Watcher on the Bluff

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:55:00 -0400

Dragonback is damp and the sky is soft slate gray this Sunday.

The bright green color of the newly opening leaves, the moss green of the lake below, the white and pink of blooming dogwoods, and the lovely purple pink hues of petunias and snapdragons glow all the brighter in the cloud-filtered light.

One of my favorite writing teachers once told me that I wrote with an "outsider's" viewpoint ? that my narrative style was the voice of a removed observer rather than a participant.

There is something to this. It is the same reason I took up photography at age eight when my parents bought me an Instamatic camera. When one photographs life, one is removed from the center of the drama. I have always been more comfortable that way.

Up here in my aerie I am the watcher on the bluff. I can see the ospreys riding the wind like white-winged kites and some young people down at the water's edge, their four-wheelers parked close by. Beyond the trailer park, I can see a gray strip of highway, all those tiny pick-up trucks rolling by.

Like the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song - "With the Birds I'll Share this Lonely View."

I don't know if all humans experience this sort of separateness that is not separateness after all. The watcher and the watched at the same time.

My dear friend, JB, remarked this week, in an email about waves and particles and how scientists have said that waves are waves until they are observed, and then they act like particles (and if no one is observing, how do they know what happens to the unobserved?), that there must be some higher level of observation where the wave and the particle may be viewed as one and the same and not either/or.

He went on to say that he has always thought of empathy as being a key element of intelligence - but that sympathy is even more important, because while empathy - being able to imagine how another being feels - suggests separateness, sympathy - actually feeling with another being - suggests connection.

An outside observer may see the drama more clearly than those who are in the midst of it, but if she observes with sympathy, she might also experience the drama without being in its midst.

Lately I am surrounded at work by a majority of people with whom I don't want to experience any sympathy (which is not to say that I don't have some genuine friends among the madding masses).

I am questioning my life's purpose and my penchant for finding myself in places where I don't fit.

When I was five my favorite song was "The Fool on the Hill," by the Beatles.

It was the same year I wrote my first story in red print on my mother's electric typewriter and illustrated it with crayon pictures of dragons.

And somehow that long ago has shaped this now.

Up From the Grave He Arose

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:14:00 -0400

It is a blustery Easter Sunday here at Dragonback. The sky is gray, the rain is steady, and the wind whispers and howls at the eaves.
A most interesting time, Easter. A time when Christians engage, with frightful unawareness, in pagan egg rituals on a day named after the goddess of spring. I find this fact beautiful and somewhat amusing, though I imagine a good many Christians – particularly those who find fault with holidays such as Halloween, might be a tad horrified if they had any inkling. The information is not difficult to find. Very few who dress in their new pastel outfits, devour chocolate bunnies, and scamper through the grass after colored eggs have bothered to wonder why, apparently.
This is a good time to contemplate the story of Jesus, of course – the crucifixion and resurrection, which so many atheists find distasteful.
The other night on the Colbert Report, Stephen interviewed an author who had written a book about how the Bible contradicts itself. (Is this a revelation?)
I can't recall the author's name, but he pointed out that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all have differing accounts of the same events. He apparently sees this as grounds for dismissing the whole story.
Colbert replied that maybe Jesus was like the elephant in the story of the blind men who fell in a pit and found an elephant and each felt a different part of the elephant and drew vastly different conclusions about what the elephant was. (It's an old story, I won't repeat it.) This comment, true to Colbert's brilliant wit, was a profound nugget of truth wrapped in an outrageously silly candy shell.
Beyond that observation, I think the author missed the whole point of the stories, which is not so much about the details, but about the underlying theme, which is present in all the gospels.
The story of the crucifixion and the resurrection is important because it contains an essential truth about existence. It humanizes the eternal creative cycle – the life/death/life pattern that permeates the universe we inhabit.
The ancients celebrated Easter as the resurrection of the earth after the desolation and death of winter. Christians settled the same theme upon the person of Jesus Christ.
Literature at its best reveals certain truths within a codified frame we call a story. Truth can be made more evident by a good story.
It can also be understood by observing the natural world, which is an unending divine story within itself.
Scientists are finding the life/death/life cycle even at the atomic level represented by number – harmony precedes disharmony, which precedes creation, which is a new harmony.
The crucifixion and resurrection story works on every level to explain this fundamental fact of life.

Spiritually, psychologically, and physically, the most profound rebirths are preceded by the darkest pain and despair.
So today is the day we celebrate the resurrection of the eternal creative spirit – the evolution of the out-moded to something new and better.
Happy Easter!

Different

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 07:30:00 -0400

It is easy to forget what a wide and varied world we live in.
I spent the week not so very far from where I currently reside – south of here in Texas – and it was interesting for me to note that even a few hundred miles makes a world of difference.
Different places, of course, have different energies and different horizons – hence the term different.
What I noticed in my travels, though they didn't even take me beyond the narrow confines of the Bible Belt, is that even if one strives to maintain a mind and a vision open to new ways of seeing and being, staying in one place all the time tends to create constricted horizons.
It occurred to me that travel is essential to a healthy sense of hope and possibility.
When one remains in the same place and never ventures beyond the edge of the visible horizon, the awareness of new possibility diminishes.
If you want to get a clearer more complete picture of where you are and where you could be, you must be willing to find a different vantage point.
It is like standing on your head. A new perspective is an essential part of reaching your potential. If you always stand upright and avoid tipping your brain upside down, never leaving the comfort of right-side-up, you won't have an accurate view of either right-side-up or upside-down.
Obvious, I know, but something I had forgotten nonetheless.
I want to thank my father and Sharon and my brother and Lani for helping me remember.
At this juncture in my life, it was, perhaps, what I needed most. As usual.

Quantum Frog Theory

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:08:00 -0400

Yesterday during my ongoing attempts to clear last autumn's debris from my garden, I discovered three hibernating frogs beneath a cache of dead leaves in the rose bed against the house.
They were sluggish and sleepy, unlike some of their cousins who are already vibrating the deep woods with their primal chants. I apologized profusely, put them back where they had been, and covered them again with their wan wood leaf meal blanket.
I love frogs – not only for the sleekness of their skin, but because they are so inscrutable. Their eyes reflect an alien consciousness and one may never know what they are thinking. I find it most beguiling.
My first knowledge of frogs came from a story book in which they wore waist coats, embroidered vests, short trousers and stockings. Probably those frogs carried pocket watches, as well. Even in those fanciful Victorian pictures, elegantly turned-out amphibians had eyes that were impossible to fathom.
Even as a small child, I knew frogs didn't wear waist coats. Perhaps it is a matter of practicality – one would hardly swim well in a waist coat.
The thing is, I always wished to see a frog in a waist coat – perhaps hopping across the yard as if he had an important engagement - his tails flying out behind.
When I was a young child, someone told me that perception was in the eye of the beholder.
At that time, I thought that was a silly idea. I was certain that the world must be comprised of an objective reality because if I were in control of what I perceived there would, for instance, be frogs leaping about with waistcoats on. Ten-year-old logic.
I have been reading a fascinating book this week written by Edward Malkowski and entitled, The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt. (Malkowski wrote another brilliant book called Before the Pharaohs, which I also highly recommend.)
The first part of The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt deals with quantum physics and consciousness. Without getting into too much technical explanation (please see Malkowski for that), one of the basic theories of quantum physics is that atoms and molecules are comprised mostly of empty space and they do not take on real form unless they are observed.
In other words, the observable world is only fully formed if someone is observing it. Furthermore, as is easily demonstrated simply by asking several people about the same event, what is observed is highly subjective and appears differently to different people.
However, if the observed world was too different in the eyes of different people, it would, obviously create nothing but utter chaos.
There are things that most non-schizophrenic, non-psychotic people agree on – such as the idea that we live on earth. Of course, that very idea has evolved with exploration and study from flat to spherical. So clearly the collective worldview is mutable, which makes eminent sense.
All this to say that, just as it is important to clean out one's garden beds and prepare for new growth, it is also important to keep one's perceptive tools cleared out.
I know I touched on this last week, but it appears that perception, unfettered by negative and destructive thoughts, such as rage and anger, will solidify a far more pleasant "reality."
Perhaps in this lifetime I will never find a frog in a waistcoat, but then again, somewhere out there in the quantum "field of all possibility" (as Deepak Chopra calls it), perhaps there is a frog in a waistcoat just waiting for the right eyes to manifest him.