I often think of the futility of describing spirituality or reality.
Obviously I attempt to do that very thing here on this blog but my intention here is largely to address topics to my own self. Topics I am considering, working out, meditating on or ideas that have come to me in “Aha!” moments which I want to return to and examine again at another time.
Still, I understand how ineffective it is. I often say trying to analyze or describe reality is like a dog trying to understand and describe what it is I do when I leave the house for work. My dog has no concept of what happens during the day at my job and the only way she can possibly understand it will be fragmented. Any attempt at trying to understand what I do when I leave the house, can only be within what her mind is capable of knowing. Perhaps she thinks I leave to go play at a dog park all day or lay around and sleep on a larger couch. And while these are jobs I would love to have, she can’t know the actual reality of what I do because she can only “think” as a dog.
Every spiritual lecture or teaching is fragmented the same way because we only have the capacity to understand within the limits of our human mind and human understanding. Notice that almost all attempts at communicating reality by humans, depends upon humans being at the center of that reality. You never hear of a lecture on reality from the viewpoint of a tree. As humans we can never know reality from the viewpoint of a tree, yet trees are as essential to the experience of reality as humans are.
Even within our human community, each person is only able to understand reality from their own limited experience. How a person with no hearing understands the reality of music is very different from that of a person who hears. Someone with no sight would never be able to explain to someone with sight the magnified capabilities of touch and feel one has when not seeing with eyes. Our ability to understand reality is also impossibly limited to the language we speak or the society in which we were raised and influenced. Someone who grew up in India will almost certainly have a different understanding of consciousness than someone who grew up in East Tennessee, United States.
To think any of our descriptions and understandings of reality and spirituality are whole and complete is misguided. While I don’t think I want to go so far as say communicating our understanding of reality is a waste of time, I will say any attempt at doing so should be understood to be as flawed as it is. Every attempt is an inaccurate and incomplete one. Human beings can only ever understand a finite idea of infinite reality.
For me, I prefer to experience reality without words or thoughts and with the understanding that I have no complete idea of what is happening. To get to a point where I think I know or understand is to be at a dangerous point. Best to reside in a cloud of unknowing.
