I, when younger,
sat in sanctuaries, marveling at
stained glass windows.
Attention was captured
not just by windows
but light streaming through windows.
The light took upon itself
the appearance of the figures in the windows -
Jesus, a lamb, and children...
Jesus and his disciples sitting at a table...
So, with the human and the body,
conduits of one Light
shaped by selves and their forms.
Different forms - human and other -
express varying degrees of Light -
some more, some less.
Some do not shine
so closed are they
from receptivity to the Light.
I never mistook
the sunlight for the window, or vice versa -
forms are forms, Light is Light.
When you deeply love someone - anything -
you do not just love them -
the Light draws your love to itself through them.
This Light is that same unspeakable
in you and the other -
so Light loves Light.
All true love is
an expression of
the Spirit of worship.
one is free to wander lost in night
or laugh and dance in the Daylight -
dust to dust, ashes to ashes
death can't touch what cannot die
what never was born never says "goodbye"
* * *
One reason we need solitude to be with ourselves is to remember who we are, to see ourselves again, not as the mental portraits drawn from the roles we have assumed and what others have told us. From birth, we were told what and who we are. What to wear. How to say and not say. Where to go and not go. What is true and not true. Whom to include and whom to exclude. God is or God is not. Yet, we are before birth. Our being born nude is a sign. Just as much as the story of an Adam and Eve roaming a garden in shameless, butt-naked attire.
So, we lose ourselves among others, forgetting ourselves to survive and, hopefully, thrive, in a world of identities, definitions, and explanations, where Spirit finds little space to express itself as itself. We arrive to live in a world of windows, and we are taught we are only a window among windows. Appearances relating to appearances - where is the Light? When the Light flows through the window, where is the window and where the Light?
We can become one in a collective benumbed muddle of faceless faces. Masks upon masks, spread everywhere. And, if one says, "I want to find myself." Good. What is the self wanting to find what self? Windows finding themselves are still only windows. And you are more than only - so is everyone. But no one has ever spoken what that more is, for the Breathe is everywhere.
We may come to sense there is more to us than we have been led to believe. This more is not merely a better version of ourselves or even the best version. Not a version at all. This more is not to be found in fixing ourselves as we have known ourselves. Not in becoming spiritual or religious, for this more is neither. This more we are is more than a self-unconsciously relating to other unconscious selves, objects to objects, walking around in a pragmatic, even if efficient, fog. So, who is really there? Who is relating to whom?
In conscious solitude, with silent contemplation, we come face to face with the false self, our socially constructed image. This small self is a picture in the head. In this aloneness, no one is present to mirror anything back to us. No one to approve of us, not even a deity to tell us how much they love us. No one to like us. No one.
No wonder people avoid such contemplative solitude. No wonder they find a myriad ways to escape the bright darkness, the imageless presence, the unspoken god. No wonder they become entrenched with bowing before other windows, rather than bowing to the Self. Loyalty to another, including religious or spiritual others, easily becomes a way to avoid the Self that is before the bowing. Sadly, abuse often follows, as one hands over their trust, continuing to project the Light within on another who claims to carry or be the Light for them. Devotion easily descends into slavish, cultish worship.
* * *
Our true nature is not a personality. The true self wears a personality, like the body wears clothes; not being a personality, it is not a person, nor is it a non-person. What I referred to in the last posting, natural great perfection, applies to this true nature. 'Within' us is the innate illumination, hidden or not.
If we practice this solitude and engage a wisdom path that keeps guiding us through the conditioning, we come to see ourselves as we are, always have been. And we begin to see others with the same insight. Up to then, we had been engaging in outsight, not insight. When seeing your true nature, you see the same in others, even when they cannot see it, maybe do not even think it exists, as in those who think they are simply a skin bag of assorted machine like parts, a more highly developed version of a toolbox with tools ... - all to become compost.
skin bag...-
reductionistic, mechanistic, materialistic
lofty peaks turned into desert dust
majestic views to paint blotches on a wall
oh how wonderful! how wonderful!
waves without an Ocean
sunshine without a Sun
oh me! oh my!
how many still stuck in Plato's cave -
and proud of it
gazing at shadows
backs to the Light -
the creed: "This is it! This is all!"
[how said when one seems unable but to believe
in their unbelief]
"i" just an assemblage of flesh, blood, bone -
what a fall! what a fall!
"dust to dust, ashes to ashes"
forms and shapes are born and die -
but such has never been said of Life
Simply because the skin bag is to become compost does not mean you can become compost. We come to see true nature in others, for it is the one true nature: there are many persons, only a single true self.
* * *
The false self is not a bad self. False means not true self, not true nature. And what do we see beyond the socially-constructed self? How do we see? There is no how. The false drops. And, if we look closely at what we call "I," we cannot find anything consistent or permanent. To see this, one needs distance from identifying with it. Some contemplative practices assist in this distancing, so the you that you are - often called the Witness - can come forth and see the unsubstantial of what you are not. If you, in silent contemplation, question, "Who am I?" and look, you will not find that "I." Like all thoughts, it disappears. In fact, it does not exist, but when you are thinking "I." Something other than the false self exposes the false self as false, for the false self cannot expose itself. That you are not cannot see that it is not.
One can engage a way of living that leads one to the door, but nothing one does opens the door. When you see, it is not something your personality - personhood - caused; otherwise, it would be another version of the cause. The door opens from the inside. Once inside, you see there never was a door, and the inside is everywhere.
Intimacy, then, is experienced beyond the emotional, when, for the false self, it is completely emotional. You, then, do not exclude emotional experience. Emotion, a lower, less whole phenomenon, arises within the trans-emotional of the true self. Trans for the lower, emotion, is enfolded in the higher, Presence itself, which is more whole than the previous lesser whole wherein one lived within the opposites of emotional and nonemotional.
* * *
An early experience, possibly my first, of this insight into another's true self, our true nature. This shift, after many years of studying spiritual traditions and meditating, including teaching meditation, signals a move from theory - believing something to be true, which I had believed, to realization, experiencing it to be true.
Stopping to fill my truck with gas, I begin walking toward the entrance of the curb store. About 20 feet away, to my right, a woman steps out of a truck. I see dirt. She is dirty. I look at her truck. Dirt. Her skin - I sense she is much younger than her appearance - dry and wrinkled, as though she has abused her body for many years.
The woman walks toward the door of the store. I walk behind, keeping a distance, not wanting to get close. She opens the door and stands aside, welcoming me in. I look at this grungy-looking woman, smiling at me with a gentle, radiant smile. I express appreciation and smile.
Relief comes over me. Her sweet, beautiful kindness arises to awareness as a contrast with how I had seen her as a body, only an appearance. Inside the store, as we both are in the snack area, she initiates a conversation, again smiling and enjoying conversing with me. We share not only words, but fellowship - and fellowship never arises from persons, only through them.
When checking out, the woman appears and stands behind me. Leaving, we exchange well-wishes. I walk toward my truck, somewhat changed and seeing differently, and knowing her differently. Over the days, I often recall her, esteeming her to be the most beautiful being I had ever met. Even as I write this years later, I feel the pure joy felt in her presence. My spirit rejoices! Yet, it is not my spirit alone, it is her spirit, and yours.
* * *
The above event reminded me of a surprising encounter years prior - with myself.
I look into a mirror - I have done this thousands of times. What was this unfamiliar looking back? I see what I have never seen, now over the age of 40.
I have no memory of ever seeing this face in the mirror. I see, as though long-forgotten, my face, pure, untainted, without any sense of guilt or wrongness that had conditioned prior seeing. Guilt had been linked with a fundamentalist religious upbringing that communicated the body was a problem, the prime cause of sin and "God's" judgment.
Reflected in this mirror, I, now, see the holy, not in a religious sense, in the sense of wholeness - pure and beautiful, untouched by the past.
* * *
The Eye of flesh sees someone or oneself as conditioned by the past. The Eye of Spirit is a seeing unconditioned, so untouched by preference based on memory. This seeing is direct, so unfiltered, so pure. This seeing is not in denial of anything, such as dirt, criminality, or meanness, yet it sees through the outer appearance and its posturing. It sees through both what others call good and bad, devilish or demonic, for it is none of this.
This seeing is of the essence of the other and becomes totally subjective in the manner of the other no longer being an object seen but seen through. And, at the same time, this means the essence is appearing from the other. This is mutual-seeing. The veil parts. Objectivity, not appearance, falls away, leaving subject-with-subject. The one Subject, in this sense, is communing with itself through relationship, even if it is a brief encounter. It only takes a moment to see, for this seeing is timeless. You can see the other's essence quality at a distance, also, for it is omnipresent. The Subject reaches out for itself through others, and not just humans.
Spirit enters into the limits of time and space to share all we humans experience. Spirit's entering into experience is our entering into our experience. Hence, fidelity to our experience, of whatever sort, is important.
What one sees, always, when seeing through the body, not at the body, is beauty. One sees what Indian religions have called the Good, True, and Beautiful. Buddhists have called Buddha nature. Hindus have called Atman - the Self. Christians have called God Christ, the Holy Spirit, and True Self. These are hints, yet they can be rightly used to help us relate to the Signified of many signs.
* * *
The body of a spiritualized being has become more luminous for this Light to be seen. Yet, it is the same Light in the one who sees such Light. And the body is not the beauty, it is the means of the beauty. One may find oneself seeing the beauty through another that might generally not be seen as outwardly beautiful in a physical sense. Again, this is for one is seeing with the Eye of Spirit - Light seeing Light.
I was experiencing this seeing when working at hospices. I was amazed at the beauty of these persons, most much older than I, preparing for the body to let go of them. In time, this seeing stabilized, manifesting in other contexts.
Possibly, for most of us, this insight will be a rare experience. For others, it might become a stable way of seeing. I am not sure anyone can see others this way all the time. Regardless, this insight reminds us of the truth of who we each truly are - spirit, not appearance. True nature is the non-appearance we are. The Self appears, but it is not an appearance. I wear clothes daily, but I am not the clothes. Spirit wears your body daily, and there is Spirit and body.
* * *
Last, what of when we cannot see this true nature in another person, and this is not due to us? If one can have this grace of insight and cannot see it in another, I cannot conclude but that some persons may be so dense, the Light cannot shine through. This denseness does not mean the Light is not present any more than the Sun is not present when hidden by clouds. Additionally, as you grow into this true nature - which is a uniting of appearance with Spirit - you might sense more, so feel some sense of dissonance with the contrast between the Light and the non-Light more so than before. The Christian Bible asks, "What fellowship has darkness with light?" The Light, upon encountering its opposite, can manifest as unrest or tension in the body-and-mind. But as the Scripture says, "The darkness cannot comprehend (or overtake) the Light."
* * *
Note:"False self" and "True Self" - the latter derives from the Christian monastic, Thomas Merton, and is widely used in contemplative Christianity. Nevertheless, there is only one self, or Self; essence; Presence, presence." Like Freud's id, ego, superego - descriptive terms. You can sense ego - Iness - via self-awareness, but you cannot find an ego. For Carl Jung, the Self is an energetic archetype inherent in everyone - the totality of the reconciled self-system, a harmonization of the divided self, and often appearing via dreams, religious images, stories, etc. The circle, the cross, ... are symbols of it. In religious sects, the guru, teacher, saint, sage, founder, deity... are recipients of devotees' projections, both of the Self and the shadow. As a clergyperson, I experienced this through being profoundly loved and intensely despised in the same congregation. This same projectic agency occurs in many relationships, from friendship, romance, counseling, parent-child, political, ... Narcissists are egoists who wish to capture others' projections to retain the devotion of the other as a lesser, dependent self. Many Christians project the Self onto Jesus but do not reclaim it, creating what I have called a Jesus cult. Buddhists have a harsh-sounding saying, but with well-meaning intent: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him," which teaches the devotee to reclaim the projection, for the devotee is as much a Buddha as any Buddha. Buddha equals Buddha nature, which is the true nature inherent in everyone, even if hidden in many. Yet, the Self is not an individual. Ego-oriented people might claim the True Self as their own, whereas it is not any one person's. Self manifests as we, yet is beyond we, so well beyond any personal tenancy. That said, it means you cannot find your Self: anyway, the Self finds you, for the self cannot discover the Self: this is a reason no one can escape surrender on the way to this realization (ego considers surrender foolish weakness; Self sees it as wise strength). And you are not Buddha, we are Buddha. And we are the Body of Christ. We are all Krisha playing in the fields.
(C) brian wilcox, 2026
