The Doors to the Way Ahead
Nancy M. Davison
Horizons are glimpses of the wider, broader, more inclusive future toward which we strive. We can never reach the horizon because it always stretches out ahead of us, but we can reach the doors hung between the gates of our next spiritual goal. We continually pass through those doors and under those gates which beckon us away from our pre-occupation with the past and our immersion in the present. Horizons are always more expansive than the places we stand at any given moment, horizons reach out before us, and are discovered by opening the doors that stand between our present understanding and that which lies on the other side. We are the perceiver and that which we perceive:
Doors
Nancy M. Davison
Can we define ourselves as doors?
Doors propped open all the time,
Hi, come on in!
Revolving doors,
Don't let it hit you on the way out!
Doors for men and doors for women
Caballeros y Damas
Doors which can only be opened
with a password or a combination
Just a minute, I'll get the key
Solid oak doors, sealing off rooms where little light enters
If I don't answer maybe they'll go away
Doors with windows, letting in the sun and moon,
screened for circulation of the air and scented breezes.
Come, enjoy the day with me
Old, rusting, rotting doors,
opening onto desolation and decay.
Where am I, who am I?
Bluebeard's doors, excitingly forbidden,
Terror lurks behind - beware!
Open portals, no challenge given.
Pass by here only on your way to somewhere else.
If we are doors,
are we open to some, closed to others?
Look through the spy-hole; who is it?
Are we veiled passageways,
enticingly leading nowhere in particular?
Or are we plain, straightforward doors,
inviting plain, straightforward talk
and enduring relationships?
If we are doors then we should ask ourselves -
Where do we lead?
Horizon
Charlotte Schmid
I sit on a beach and watch the sunset. Slowly the sun drops lower and lower as if it were pulled by an invisible vacuum beyond the horizon. The sun changes its shape, and the sky starts to shift its colors from a fiery red to a deep red, then purple, orange and orange-green. I sit and I watch and let my mind go as if it could climb down after the sun until it disappears from my consciousness. Night sets in. The horizon fades into haziness, then seems to disappear, water and sky somewhere joining together, becoming the same, amalgamated.
My mind takes a leap to a recent meeting at a California Zoo. I was early for my appointment, strolling around a bit until I found a bench in front of the giraffe's quarter. Three adult giraffes slowly paced their limited corral while two young ones, who obviously did not know who they were, just sat on the ground, staring into space as if they were in an asylum waiting out their time. It seemed that once in a while, perhaps, they were catching a faint memory of ancestral destiny as it float-ed by their faces. As I watched the giraffes they seemed so far removed from their inherited birthright. Seemingly forgotten were the plains, the wide open spaces where their ancestors had roamed to their delight with their long necks stretching to reach the leaves from the acacia tree and their long legs moving for miles with no boundaries in sight. Their horizon was far, far away and barely noticeable as it got caught in the fleeting eye. The older animals in this zoo still seemed to have a sense of earlier, better times but the younger ones appeared as if they were computerized toys, without animation, spiritless. They were simply there for the amusement or "education" of the visitors. The only thing that mattered to them now was their limited space, outlined in a most cruel way. Shouldn't these animals be free? Don't we get enough education about animals through books, and TV? Do we have any right to limit or interfere with one's horizon even if it is "only" the animal kingdom?
A horizon outlines a border – arbitrarily perhaps &3150; a fence built for the mind where any experience gets glued on just as an insect gets stuck on a flytrap, self-limited. Mind gets trapped as if a fence was built where the mind thinks it needs to take a rest as if sitting on a bench waiting for something to change, for a new thought to move the horizon-stage a bit farther. But no stagehand will do this. We become our own mind-traps until the fire in our heart slowly burns a bigger and bigger hole into this construct and rearranges our thoughts again. Free will? In the year of 2000? I hear chuckles of every color as wide as the color of the human skin. Yes, there is free will, will that is not limited by any horizon. Will that transcends, not easily, but in labored waves. And so, one day it may seem as if we were on a boat, slicing through the waves with the horizon always moving away so that we can never get close, can never grasp it, forever elusive. And on that day, perhaps, we will realize that spirit knows no horizon.
Sunrise or Sunset
Lisa M. Payne
If you see but a single horizon, then you are a linear thinker. On the other hand, if you think in a cyclic manner, you see many horizons. If you follow the curvature of the planet, you experience continuous horizons. Continuous sunsets or sunrises, depending on directionality, give the mental traveler endless possibilities and configurations of beauty. So, too, does cyclic thinking bring us to openness.
The mental traveler can gaze out upon a myriad of vistas if she or he is open to it. To see and believe in only the view spread out before one is erroneous. Does the artist delineate between the earth and sky only? No, many perspectives are played with to lend more to even that single horizon portrayed. The painting is completed with no empty spaces left or detail explored.
When you are young, playing in the sand, you look to the horizon in hope of seeing an in-coming ship or the tell-tale spouting of a whale. If you use the imagination, you can pretend to see all the way to some island convinced you see palm trees in the distance. You can expand your singular perspective of the horizon into multiple horizons. Imagination is powerful, actualization is even more so. Visualization to reality is the abil-ity to use all potential creativity.
Expanded horizons, openness, creativity; all help to achieve potentiality. What it is to be fully human! Caught in a linear modality, your cyclic progress is cut off; not even considered. Fear of expansion or relinquishing your personal view upon the singular horizon must be overcome; your hold on reality broken.
Once released from your miasma, you may encounter many more falsehoods. Yet clarity is forever sought; the impetus to seek out new vistas; the motivation to find continuous horizons. It then becomes the mental traveler's virtual, perpetual reality – a single vision horizon no more.
Destination "Horizons"
Ford Boyer
It is as if you are on a speeding bullet train, with only one destination ahead; one horizon. Or, you are sitting in a dark room with only the thought of how to obtain light, one horizon. We humans tend to limit our thinking, our horizons, to that thought speeding through our minds at any one moment. We tend to see only that which is placed before us at any given moment. We tend to believe in only one path to illumination whether it be the teachings of the Bible, Buddhism, Theosophy, the Ageless Wisdom or one or other of the many available philosophies. We seem to take delight in quoting bits and pieces from these philosophies in order either to ensure ourselves of our own standing in life or to impress others by expressing our knowledge.
Knowledge is power. In her book, The Initiation of the World, Vera Stanley Alder tells us that "according to the size of [the] mental horizon so will the size of [the] power be." We attend schools, colleges, universities, to expand our knowledge so that we may become secure, powerful, rich, famous (whatever the motive) yet we might ask if we truly are expanding our horizons. Even after obtaining our degrees we tend to get stuck in one way of thinking; our horizons seem to stop expanding.
We read about, hear about and see reports of various religious groups fighting for the right to "control" Jerusalem. It is sad and absurd, as well as humorous at times, to see groups (and individuals) limit their thinking to a physical place when they could be expanding the compassion of the heart and placing the emphasis on heart and mind rather than a physical location. What a limited horizon it is to think that only one place in the world holds spiritual knowledge, insight or power.
Can we limit the mind to a "place"? Can we limit the heart to the function of pumping blood? One meaning of horizon is "limit" but there are many horizons, ever expanding ones, ever greater limits. In order to expand our horizons, we must get rid of the outdated and unused baggage that we carry for years. We tend to become so secure with our baggage that we are afraid to let it go. Maybe we get some type of "high" from just knowing that our way of thinking is still present and supporting us. If we let go of the baggage, what will we have to replace it? What will we have to think about? We can't think about the future because the unknown is too frightful and we can't think about the past because we let go of all that garbage. Where are we? What is the horizon? What is the destination if the past is gone and the future does not exist? According to some philosophies, the past and future are actually NOW, but just what that means is up to each of us to discover through expanding our horizons. We expand our horizons through experiment, experience and expression.
In one sense, we are all great scientists of the mind. As children we experiment with new ways of having fun; using the physical body and all its components. As teens we experiment with the emotions while, at the same time, we are beginning to learn to test the horizons of the mind. As we experiment and find that one particular method works, we call that experience and we attempt to tell or show others that we have expanded our horizons. Sometimes we get stuck at a certain point until a crisis zaps us and forces us to change the way we think, to expand our horizon.
"I'm right" is the most limited type of horizon as is "I know enough to get me through life" so why not just sit back and enjoy life. Humanity as a whole moves forward and it is the individual units within humanity that create the great experiment that leads to the experiences that lead to new expressions of new horizons. We have progressed from no typewriter to a manual typewriter to an electric one to computer to a network to networks of networks of computers. And what is happening to the mental horizons? Have they not also expanded? For some of us, the next farm or town was the greater horizon and now, through instant communications, horizons are unlimited.
Was the Renaissance as mind-boggling to some just as our computer age is mind boggling to many? Humanity, it seems, is destined to be an instrument of expanding horizons, never resting until some unfathomable point of evolution is reached and then what?
The only way to find the answer to that question is to get on the bullet train of mind and heart and continue to travel to "Destination "HorizonS".