by Marilyn Muir, LPMAFA
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Conditioning: As an adult, I am a Metaphysician by choice and by personal experience. This was not always true. I had a common American upbringing. My early, very rural, life was Christian in nature, with a small twist – one parent was Catholic, one was Protestant. In a very small, northern, rural town in the 40’s, there wasn’t a lot of social activity. So, my child-self took advantage by going to both churches, both daily vacation bible schools, both choral groups, etc. As I developed, a natural slant emerged and I followed one path more than the other, determining my emerging belief system by the better choir (a child’s reasoning capability).
As I got older, my current beliefs were continually shaped by experience and to what I was exposed. This was a changing, growing perspective; not rigid but also not necessarily based on absolutist knowledge. I did the usual things and married, had children, which brought in new family and cultural influences to my personal perspective. Plus, I moved and lived in several states, offering more new and varied perspectives. I was unconsciously being shaped by the people in my immediate surroundings, my culture, and my ongoing personal experience.
Eventually, I “accidentally” stumbled into the Spiritualist realm and was fascinated by what I had not ever experienced or known. Know that I do not believe in “accidents”. When it is time for anyone to spiritually awaken, the universe has all the time and tools to awaken you. I had taken it for granted throughout my life, but my spirituality was in flux – expanding, growing, and becoming, revealing more and more layers of life and experience. And it is still that way today. I am continually exploring, learning, growing, becoming.
Are we there yet? Over the years, as a practitioner and teacher, I have been asked many times if a person’s lessons were done. My response has always been, “Are you still wearing a body?” That, to me, is the determining factor. If you have no more to learn from this phase of existence, you should have no reason to remain. It is a form of graduation from what has been experienced, but our society calls it death!
Uniqueness: There are eight+ billion people on this globe at this moment (August 2024), and the overall worldwide birthrate is currently 4.3 births per second (Wikipedia). Each birth is unique, just as each grain of sand, each snowflake, each leaf is unique. I do astrological charting. Based on the vast distances on this huge globe on which we all live (Mother Earth), each birth chart for every one of those individuals born is unique. Even multiple births have unique patterns. Think about the multiple births you personally know. There may be similarities, but each individual is unique. The universe creates in uniqueness. With advancing medical techniques, there may come a time when such uniqueness is in question, especially in life-saving moments at birth; but I have not yet encountered one. Basically, the universe choses diversity and creates one of a kind. It is mankind that attempts to take such carefully chosen diversity and turn it into sameness, and that may be at the core of many of our problems. We should celebrate our uniqueness. We each truly are one of a kind!
Definitions of perspective:
Brittanica: “a way of thinking about and understanding something (such as a particular issue or life in general)”
Merriam-Webster: “a mental view or prospect, a visible scene, point of view”
Parallax: In my astrology classes, I used parallax to illustrate the difference of points of view as we were measuring the movement of bodies through our solar system. Find a small stationary object in your location, such as a doorknob. Standing very still a few feet back from the object, focus your eyes on it. Raise one of your thumbs to cover that object to your vision. Remain stationary and close both eyes for a short moment. Then open one eye only. You may have to shift your thumb slightly to again cover the knob. Again, close both eyes for a moment, then open the other eye. Observe that your thumb no longer covers the knob, and you must actually move your thumb to do so. That exercise illustrates the vision shift between your left eye and your right eye, a distance of two or so inches. That is an illustration of perspective. This duality of eye perspective is particularly helpful to humans in determining distance.
Conundrum: In case you haven’t noticed, sometime life is very confusing. What one person experiences as pain, another might experience as pleasure. What is satisfying to one might be an anathema to another. Each experience is judged from the individual’s perspective. I tried to imagine the infinite varieties of human perspective and how to examine the possibilities without internal bias. I like metaphors or teachable examples to illustrate.
- See yourself in a room. Wherever the door is, place your back against that wall and describe the room you see without moving your head and eyes. Your description will be correct!
- Now cross that room and place your back against that wall. Again describe the room you see without moving your head and eyes. You are right!
- Move kitty corner to that position, place your back against that wall and describe. Right!
- Move opposite to that wall, repeat. Right.
- Four perspectives, each correct, each equal in value. No lies, no deceit, no misinformation.
More: See yourself on the ceiling looking down at the room, description. Right!
More/more: Lie down on the floor, looking up at the room, description. Right!
We have just described one scenario with six different views, all correct, but all partial.
We are not done. Stand outside the room and look through a door or windows (one position at a time). Your view is constricted, but will somewhat correspond to the original views. Right!
A porthole in a ship would offer a much smaller viewing perspective than an open door. Standing on deck would increase perspective and subtly change the overall meaning.
We may have a narrow perspective, a focused perspective or a wider perspective. All are Right!
We are not done. This is a moment in time. It has a past, a present, and a future.
Atmosphere: What may have affected each of those viewpoints just prior to or just after your viewing? Each moment and its description has a past, a present and a future. Have you ever entered a home and felt tension, although nothing was happening at that moment? Or perhaps what you experienced as you entered was relief, because you interrupted something uncomfortable.
Content: What about conditioning created by the past or by anticipation of the future? What if you heard pieces of conversation, but not the entirety? It would be like listening in but not truly perceiving the wholeness. What about tone, such as judgment or rigidity? What about a conciliatory or soothing tone? Hearing pieces of conversations, not living the whole experience, can lead to judgment or rigidity. Hearing one side of a problematic conversation can also lead to the same. Or, we can listen with an open mind, free of judgment or bias; just observing and learning.
More? This exercise could be applied to all levels of experience including the philosophical, the religious, and the metaphysical. As with all other human subjects, there are many opinions experiences, and fervent beliefs; all of which may be valid to an individual, but do not necessarily translate well to others, who also have fervent beliefs, etc. When we enter the higher functions of human thought and reaction, we are still seeing through our personal perspective. When we are interacting with others, they and we are experiencing it through each personal perspective. Sometimes that works, sometimes not. It does not automatically make one of us right and the other wrong – that’s judgement. When we can calmly accept the differences and move on without heat, that’s more along the philosophical viewpoint.
Tradition has its value. Experience has its value. Personal taste and preference have value. Judgement is where we get stuck. Use your philosophy, your spirituality, your higher thoughts to examine the differences between supposedly competing perspectives to help your reasoning.
Thanks to Meta (Facebook) and its contributors for the above illustrations.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.