During my brief dalliance with cannabis long ago in college, I walked outside my dorm and found myself in the Garden of Eden — like the first human being on the first day, awed by the beauty of my surroundings. The world looked whole and holy and exquisite and good.
Soon enough I realized I didn’t need, and couldn’t rely on, a drug to remove the filters from my sight — but I learned that in the ordinary everyday, we have filters and don’t see all there is to see, that we seldom spy the extraordinary in the ordinary, that there is more to seeing than meets the eyes.
I also learned that, instead of the world meeting my eyes, sight could take me outside my “self” to meet the world, the first step toward what some call “mysticism.”
“Beauty,” I concluded, is where goodness and receptivity intersect. The world is inherently good, as the Creator famously noted in the biblical creation narrative — delivering the primordial judgment, and coining an important new concept: God saw that it was “good.” But only occasionally do the rest of us appreciate the world in its fullness. Beauty is only in the eyes of the appreciative beholder.
Sight, it seems, rarely gets out of first gear, which made me wonder if we ever really left the “Garden of Eden.” Maybe we simply stopped noticing it. Our original “sin”? Looking at creation through an inherited screen of shame. Our eyes rarely settle on anything. We glance sideways, shyly, eyes darting like frenetic sparrows. We’re too busy fretting about survival to take the time to truly see.
We are conditioned from an early age: Don’t stare. It’s impolite. Maybe even dangerous. Shame on you.
But when we do set our sight on the world around us, for a luxurious length of time … oh my. Eyes are more than windows to the soul. They are portals to ecstasy, an out-of-the-self experience. If two people look deeply enough, long enough into each other’s eyes, we’re told, they’re likely to fall in love — or what feels like “falling in love,” otherwise known as intimacy.
And if there is more to seeing than we thought, there is probably more to everything — within us and around us. In fact, if I could wrap my spirit journey in a single word, the word would be “More.”
There is More to a rose than its aroma. If you look, you may find a honeybee writhing ecstatically at its center, coating itself in pollen, preparing to fertilize Eden at Large.
There is More to the cosmos than we know, of course, but also More to our inner universe.
More is not about greed and gratification. It’s More about quality than quantity, possibility and potential.
The More of our brain is the power of our untapped mind. The More of our heart is the not-yet-met soul.
We are More than ego, More than our conscious self, More than our winning and losing, More than achieving or succeeding.
We are More than accumulated memories and actions. There is More to us than we dare to imagine or dream.
More is the core of hope.
There is More to gravity than an apple falling to the ground, said Newton.
There is More to love, Chardin said, than falling for each other. Love, he said, is More like discovering fire for the second time in human history.
Gravity and love are the two great mysteries of the universe. Mystery is the More we can’t fathom. More is the redemptive “I don’t know,” writhing at the heart of every certainty, like that honeybee coated in pollen. More than we can wrap our minds around, More questions than we can answer, More answers than we can question.
More’s great beyond beckons, draws us onward, upward, inward.
More is the possibility of life after death — and life before death.
There is More to belief than being anchored in certainty. Possibility is More than enough. More is a holy restlessness, sifting through each inexhaustible day, searching for meaning, More than anyone can find in a single lifetime.
There is More to human being and human doing, More to becoming homo sapiens.
More may be the greatest force in the universe. More than gravity and love combined.
Maybe More is gravity and love combined.
Even less is More (More or less).
More ripples, more echoes.
More is the great encore.