The scaffolding through which I interpret and approach the world still affects the way others see me. It is how I present and reveal myself.
But that same scaffolding is becoming more fuzzy, loose and fluid the more I am able to approach moments of unstructured absorption. My own scaffolding seems to have less and less effect on how I see and understand others, even while I think it still has some effect on the way they see me.
I noticed this at a gathering I attended last evening. When I look at my life and try to see it as others might, I see a structured scaffolding that has a certain shape. I think others might see me as a presence that has a certain scaffolding. I have been living in a shape, a form that gives shape. There is a scaffolding that affects how others see me and how they see who I have become.
I think that that same scaffolding has shaped for me how I see the world. I look out through the same scaffolding and think I understand what I see, all based on my own scaffolding. That scaffolding has shaped my experience and how I have interpreted all I have encountered.
A friend of mine is currently in Egypt, traveling through the traces of an ancient civilization and sending back amazing images that suggest what that civilization must have been like 4000 years ago. As I look back, as I suspect my friend does as well, we see a structure of a world now seen only from the outside.
Moreover, that same scaffolding also shaped the view that those people who lived 4000 years ago used to interpret and understand their world. I am aware that, looking through the scaffolding I can see, I have a certain view of those ancient Egyptians. The scaffolding they have left behind, shapes my understanding of their world.
However, I strongly suspect that their view looking out through that same scaffolding, must have been dramatically different from mine. Yet we both are looking at essentially the same world.
What view did indigenous people have of those strange, uncivilized Europeans who came ashore in 1609? How they must have seen them as uncultured, dressed in those awkward, tiny shoes and wearing those unpractical, ridiculous hats. They even rowed ashore in boats that had no relationship to the forests and streams the indigenous people knew so well. Those uncivilized Europeans even farmed in such impractical, unproductive ways, planting vegetables in separate straight lines. Did then not know about the benefits of the Three Sisters?
I live in a neighborhood that is a structured scaffold of parallel streets, two-storied houses and a rich assortment of yards and gardens. It is what outsiders see and experience as they come into Bryn Mawr. It is what shapes my scaffold view of the neighborhood, my living space. It affects what I understand as I look out and take in the world beyond my neighborhood.
It is this proximate scaffolding with which I surround myself that I use as I daily make sense of the world.
I meet at least once a week with others who are characterized by others as meditators, Buddhists, mindful people. That is how others see the scaffolding of our lives, shaped as it is by reflective, mindful living.
For me, that same scaffolding profoundly affects the way I see the world. It offers an ordering that arises out of my mind to filter and be imposed on all I see.
At the same time, I think that my personal scaffolding is having less effect on my view than it once did. The rigidity of my scaffolding is relaxing, especially as I begin to have moments of formless absorption. The scaffolding clearly is present, but it is getting more soft around the edges, a little more fluid. My view of the world keeps shifting from day to day.
There are times that I think I come close to seeing others as they are without the filtering influence of my own life structure.