An Exercise in Imagination

Imagine with me: You can see everyone with a metaphorical heart in their chest.  Any feeling of love going out to or coming in from others looks like a bright light.  The heart itself glows because of the love it contains. A healthy heart is one that pumps light in and out like a constant flow of blood.  And that love light has healing power. 

Now imagine two metal sliding doors that open and close over the heart like two stage curtains.  Each person chooses how open or closed those doors are.  People who keep them completely closed do so in fear to protect themselves from exposure to emotional shrapnel shot at them by others.  They have often suffered injury and carry scars with them.  But the closed doors also prevent any light from going in or out which isolates the heart from new light.  The injury can not be fully healed without a fresh flow of light.

The opposite side of the coin are people who keep their doors wide open all of the time.  They are able to send out and receive lots of light.  But they are often injured by emotional shrapnel because it flies everywhere, not just at the target it was aimed at.  Most people keep their doors partially open at a level that is comfortable to them in an attempt to send out and receive light while suffering a minimal amount of emotional injury in the process.

But now imagine that there is a bullet proof, plexiglass window that can be lowered down over the heart the way you would lower a garage door.  This allows the light to come in and out of the heart freely while protecting the heart from damage.  Not many people have discovered their ability to locate and use this tool.  The few that have do not struggle so much with worry about what others think of them.  And they tend to become our heroes and spiritual leaders who we look up to such as Jesus, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, among others.  This did not entirely prevent them from feeling the hurts of this life.  But it dulled the pain and helped them to focus on more important issues.  And it is these leaders who appear to exude such emotional peace which draws people to study under them for the purpose of discovering how to locate the plexiglass window which resides within themselves.

This is the point at which religions start.  People gather to follow and learn from a leader.  Those people become the church.  The leader's teachings become the religious text which the people try to follow like the law.  Many people will find the peace they seek from following the religion but many others will still be unfulfilled.  And they will blame themselves for this as if they are not as good as others because of it.  Some will spend their entire lives in a religion that never really brought them the peace they sought.  But others will leave that religion to begin to follow yet another leader who has yet another way to reach peace and a new religion is soon established from his teachings as well.  It appears to be a cycle which has perpetuated since the dawn of time.  And it explains why we have so many world religions.

It is undeniable that we all seek peace.  And we know there is peace to be found on Earth because we have observed it in the lives of the few, many of which took different paths to discover their personal peace. But for the rest of us our eternal search continues.