When I moved to Southern California last year, I noticed the abundance of winter birds. They, like me, were here for the winter sun. I put out many different feeders in my yard–for big birds, hummingbirds and little birds, and then I waited to see if my dining invitation would appeal to my potential friends. Sure enough, they came to feed in a variety of sizes and colors. I could watch them feeding, visiting and competing for space. Out of thin air, their invisible life was now something that was visible to me. When I asked myself about this new found pleasure, I realized that my feeders had made their invisible world word in the sky become visible.
When I thought about how the invisible became visible, I recognized many examples of this transformation– from sunlight revealing sights hidden in darkness to unconscious intentions revealed by my subsequent actions. And, as a Zen teacher, I noticed that meditation performed that very function–revealing the hidden inner world– among other tasks. But isn’t that our human function to become aware, to be become fully conscious?
I wrote a small description of my experience of making the invisible visible, and I made a mental note to write more in this blog. But alas, my pandemic induced writer’s block silenced me. And then a few months later, I saw “MY PHRASE” used to describe a Zen training by one of my FB friends. “Well” , I exclaimed to myself, no credit for MY phrase. When I read the intention of the training being advertised, I saw that there was a description of how ritual made spiritual practice visible. Dang! Definitely a creative use of MY phrase. I saw MY phrase used again for another event–and it neither credited me or my FB friend’s training. Later, I read that the phrase had been used 20 years ago at a Buddhist training to talk about racism. And of course, pioneers in psychology described their goal for treatment “Making the unconscious conscious.” Oops, the phrase hidden by lost memory was not “MINE” at all.
My (sometimes) invisible personal tendency to feeling unacknowledged or undervalued was made visible to me. How interesting that we can find a thread leading us to deeper self-knowledge whenever we take an honest look within the calm and steady space of expanded awareness. In meditation, we settle our mind to become aware of what is aware, and we can develop a stronger relationship with that which observes.The light of our mind shines and illuminates. Look! Look! Mysteries of our suffering can revealed and even resolved. The very thoughts, experiences and forgotten feelings that we hid away can be revealed. The invisible becomes visible time after time.
