Life’s Symphony

You also falsely think that your fears protect you, that your beliefs have made you what you are, and that your attachments make your life exciting and secure. You fail to see that they are actually a screen between you and life’s symphony. It is quite impossible, of course, to be fully conscious of every note in life’s symphony. But if your spirit becomes unclogged and your senses open, you will begin to perceive things as they really are. You will begin to interact with reality, and you will be entranced by the harmonies of the universe. Then, you will understand what God is—for you will at last know what love is.

Look at it this way: You don’t see persons and things as they are; you see them as you are. If you wish to see them as they are, you must attend to your attachments and the fears that they generate. It is these attachments and fears that will decide what you notice about life and what you block out. Then, whatever you notice commands your attention, and since your looking has been selective, you have an illusory vision of the things and people around you. The more you look with this distorted version, the more you become con­vinced that it is the true picture of the world—and your attachments and fears will continue to process incoming data in a way that rein­forces your picture.

This is how your beliefs originate: they are fixed, unchanging ways of looking at a reality that is not fixed and unchanging at all, but constantly moving and changing. So, it is no longer the real world that you interact with and love, but a world created by your head. It is only when you drop your beliefs, fears, and the attach­ments that breed them that you will be freed from the insensitivity that makes you so deaf and blind to yourself and the world.

Think of yourself listening to an orchestra, and the sound of the drum is so loud that nothing else can be heard. To enjoy the symphony, you must be responsive to every instrument in the orchestra. To be in the state called love, you must be sensitive to the uniqueness and beauty of every single thing and person around you. You can hardly be said to love what you do not even notice; and if you notice only a few beings to the exclusion of others, that is not love at all. For love excludes no one at all; it embraces the whole of life. Love listens to the symphony as a whole, not to just one or the other of the musical instruments.

Stop for a moment now to consider how your attachments drain life’s symphony of sound for you no less than a politician’s attachment to power or the businessman’s attachment to money have deafened them to the melody of life.