A thought today about the ineffable nature and power of scale and perspective. Looking out at the ocean while meditating, the vastness of it, the never-ending roiling of the waves, the heaving to and fro, up and down, out and back. Lapping against the rocks of the shore, with the jungle coming down to meet it, here in Yelapa Mexico.
All sorts of amazingly tangled plant life, with fish swimming through the depths that I saw with a mask and snorkel.
If you think about it, at a different scale than the one we normally see, we ourselves have an ocean of acid in our stomaches, just as big – heaving and gurgling away, with an amazing array of creatures and plant life living within it. Fighting and co-operating all within their own scale of perception, action and re-action. Imagine the landscape viewed at that scale – very similar in many ways, and very different, very alien. When we change the scale – zoom in or zoom out by orders of magnitude, everything changes. What looks like conflict turns out to be incredible harmony, and harmonious peaceful situations turn out to be based on immense conflict, war and death. Bacterial wars raging for generations, trillions of organisms dying, while we enjoy a massage at a serene spa, sipping cucumber water.
Of course we can normally act and react only at the particular scales that we’re operating at. If a bus is barreling down on top of you, well, moving out of the way is going to increase the longevity of this particular incarnation of you, at this scale. Many other pieces of “you” at other scales will continue however.
But in most situations we can use the power of shifting our perspective, knowing that at another scale this entire situation looks very different. So the next time you’re in a conflict or a stressful situation, you could use the power of shifting your perspective to see that things are entirely different at other scales. The meaning of every situation is entirely up to us. Is this conflict you’re experiencing actually contributing to harmony at another scale? Quite probably.
We can always step outside the specific frame of reference we may be caught in, and choose to adopt a more playful approach in this game, this dance of life. Not quite so serious. Why? Because it feels good.
Wishing you all peace, love, joy, magic and PLAY ❤️??