We say I see or I get the picture to indicate I understand – to place myself beneath the form of presentation.  I com-prehend or grasp with my hand: another way of acknowledging that one is in touch with another. Visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory … we communicate and connect through all our senses. Each sense holds as metaphor for the deepest and most profound resonance of our shared realities.

The spaces between us, the ether of yet-to-be-defined possibilities within which we dwell, are vibrant and alive with all manner of sound, taste, touch, color, fragrance. Words spoken between us are froth and foam on a sea of sensual meaning.

We reach for each other through words carried on the profound wisdom of our senses; senses that sustain, support and inform the intelligence of our hearts, minds and souls.

If we but allow it.

Freud, through the ‘allowance’ of his radical rule (perhaps more ancient than he realized), was thought to have opened Pandora’s box! Son of Abraham that he was, his ‘science’ was a cord binding him to the duality of the Greeks.  Yet the lid was off.  Through the ever-courageous explorations of his followers and heretics alike, our creative capacity to find together each other and ourselves through the healing reunion of our minds, hearts and senses transformed Pandora’s box into a fountain of possibility and hope.

As we allow and awaken together the whole of our sentient selves, our journeys’ inevitable mishaps – bound in unspoken fractures and splinted by disallowance – find the healing space of witness. That space of witness between us – that release from averting our eyes – frees, through all our senses, the captives of fear and pain; frees us to see, its profoundly felt meanings: the full joy and play of possibility between us – rich in color, sound, taste and touch.

The undefined spaces between us, and within which our lives unfold together, are alive with music, dance and color held in the possibilities of meaning and love – present and awaiting our arrival.

Relax your breath; un-focus your sight; open your heart. Released from what we ‘know’, a welcome surprise awaits us.

***

Seeing.

We might say that the whole of life

lies in that verb

if not in end, at least in essence.

Fuller being is closer union;

… union can only increase

through an increase in consciousness,

that is to say, vision.

And that, doubtless,

is why

the history of the living world can be summarized

as the

elaboration of ever more perfect eyes

within the cosmos

in which there is always

something more to be seen.

To try to see

more and better

is not a matter of whim or curiosity

or self indulgence.

To see or to perish

is the very condition

laid upon

everything that makes up the universe,

by reason of the mysterious gift of existence.

And this, in superior measure,

is man’s condition.

After Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Phenomenon of Man

© 2014 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW

All rights reserved

South Garden Press, New York

For thoughts and comments, please e mail to: jdonnellydsw@gmail.com