Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point

I had actually completed this entry, was on the verge of posting it, when I accidentally erased everything I'd written. So I've been staring at this blank page trying to reconstruct the "gems of wisdom" I had just finished polishing.

And then the irony struck me. This entry was supposed to be about the soul and the paradox of finding ourselves by losing ourselves, and my theory of how this works.

I called the entry "vanishing point" - which is a term for the spot on the horizon where two parallel lines seem to converge.

I have this idea that the human soul is such a point - a vanishing point in the self through which we experience other people, the world, the universe.

And then, just as I was getting carried away by the loveliness of this image - Poof! My words vanished.

I've been sitting here trying to wrest some lesson out of my frustration, and what I keep coming back to is: detachment. 

For weeks I've been feeling the need to exert all my energies and, through sheer strength of will, simply FORCE life's doors to open. I've been editing and honing and tweaking and basically obsessing over every step I make out into the world - little things like opening a Twitter account, publishing this website, applying for a job.

It just made me realise how our need for control binds us ever tighter to ourselves, in a destructive, self-referential loop. It seems that true progress can only come once we've let ourselves go, accepted our flaws, made peace with the fact that going out into the world means sometimes being wrong, getting hurt.

But how to do this? Accepting imperfection is all well and good in theory, but we are constantly bombarded by ideals, whether on the cover of magazines or in the pages of religious texts. How to accept necessary imperfection, while at the same time striving to be truer, kinder, wiser?


Obviously I don't have any answers (this blog is about questions after all), but I do think some clues lie in the idea I started out with: that of the soul as the vanishing point of the self.

For me, it's a relief to think that there is some small pinprick in me that is not-me. I don't know what it is exactly. All I know is that when I'm squeezing myself into some ideal mould of who I think I should be, this little place of not-me refuses to be squeezed. 


Like a doorway, it retains its integrity and offers me a glimpse of a world beyond myself, a world that needs me to just get on with the task at hand - with honesty yes, but not perfection.


And that tiny glimpse is all I need to square my shoulders, take a deep breath, and walk on.

The Door

The Door

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

~ William Blake*

After a few days of very random, jet-lagged sleep, I finally managed to wake at six today, though my mind was troubled with thoughts of finding work, purpose, a place at the table, etc. After tossing around a bit, I got up, put my iPod on shuffle and was about to start sending emails when the first strains of pure human voice released my tightly wound synapses.

It was the sound of Gregorian chant, something, to be honest, I enjoy but don't listen to much, especially in this fast-paced world when I feel the need for something, well, more thumpin'.

But the purity and precision of the notes pierced the layers of worry and reminded me that the answers I'm seeking already exist within me, waiting only for the right question to be asked, for the right door that opens only at the touch of my key.

But - the skeptic in me insists - does such a door exist? And if it does, is there just one or many? One job I am meant to do, or a dozen? One soul mate, or a hundred potential partners?

I like the idea quantum physics gives us of potential. Subatomic particles like electrons exist, before they are observed by an instrument, in a state of possibility - neither particle nor wave, and at the same time both. In the quantum world, there may be many dimensions, many worlds in which our life paths change depending on a single different decision.

But once that decision is made, once that door is opened and the threshold crossed, there is no going back. Your world is changed and your path suddenly crystallizes. Possibility becomes reality, and a thousand options merge into the life you are living now - the only life, if you are both wise and fortunate, you can imagine yourself living.

If you are someone like me, someone who agonizes over finding just the right door, this seems like a decision waaaaaay above my pay grade. 

And yet, the funny thing is, the more trust you have in yourself, the more confidence you have in your own competence, the more your likelihood of right living is ensured. For there may be a million "right doors", yet once you step over just one of those thresholds, it becomes the only right way, the only career or partner you both need and want.

Friends are always telling me "if it's meant to be, it will be," and while I detest platitudes, there is a grain of truth to this cliche. If something is "meant" to be, it is intentional, not passive. And I feel, in the great life stories, there is this wonderful alchemy between active intention and luck, chance or serendipity.

The trick, I guess, is to be firm in your hopes and goals while remaining open to those chance meetings and opportunities that are unplanned but somehow exactly what you need. Because, as much as we search "out there" for it, the door we are looking for, the one that opens out onto the entire universe, is the one hidden deep inside our hearts, waiting only for us to ask: "Now where did I put that darn key?"

(*Author's Note: This Blake quotation was the inspiration for Huxley's drug-laced memoir "The Doors of Perception." I am using the quote without this connotation.)