As I look at the world with softer eyes, the more I see that I have been looking through a distorting veil all my life. Reality is not the world as I have learned to see it, and I am slowly unlearning much of what I have been taught.
There are probably many ways to pierce the veil and begin to experience reality in a new and clear way. I long ago discovered that poetry has this power. Poets have a skill of turning my perception of the world over and over. A poem that is well-written has the power to allow me to experience what the poet has experienced, to see reality in a new and unfamiliar way. The veil of my common experience is pulled aside and I see reality with fresh, soft eyes.
I am grateful for all the poets who have done this for me. They have taken me on journeys I might have never discovered without their guidance.
Right now, I am reading and listening about the power of psychedelics to take away the veil and remove the constraints imposed on the mind. This past week, Michael Pollan and Rick Doblin have given me information about the effect of psychedelics I never understood before. I especially find it interesting that the experiences they describe sound much like the experiences I have in meditation.
For me, meditation has become a practice at skillful concentration. So much has changed for me in the past three year. For me, there now is a facile letting go of constraints that is preliminary to meditation. I easily enter into a time of relaxed diligence that takes my mind away from many of my preconceptions. Past experience becomes more of a distraction than a guide. The veil parts, and a wisp of freshness fills my whole body. The world around me simply is.
Mindfulness offers me similar insights that Michael Pollan and Rick Doblin seem to be describing. Because it is something I can choose, mindfulness can take place whenever I want. My walk across the parking lot from my car into Trader Joe’s is not a convenient time for psychedelics, but it is a very nice opportunity to be mindful.
Mindfulness for me is not shocking, not a surprise, never a bad trip. It does take me through the veil, and the world appears as it has never been experienced by me before.