Beyond Measure

‘Out beyond the idea of right doing and wrong doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’ For me, the highest quote that could ever be conceived. I remember when I first read those words. It was as if someone knew my deepest self much, much better than I did and said, ‘Here’s your answer, Kid, run with it.’

Spending years scrambling around in a vat of every-day thoughts, trying to extract some higher mystique. Then hearing those majestic words ‘out beyond’. Things began to click. Oooh! These words we’re using and these actions in which we participate are not good enough! Nothing, ‘no thing’ in my life back then was ‘out beyond’

‘Things’ back then mattered . . . like reading a child’s book over and over and muttering, ‘Is this all there is?’

Second in line is a quote, an aphorism, from Marianne Williamson. Rumi’s quote above connects us with a potential ‘place’ to which we may attain, while Williamson’s quote below, acquaints us, most poignantly, with what we think about ourselves.

‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.’

Talk about pulling back the curtain and exposing our deepest selves! It brings into focus the idea that we are not scared of what we have to go through – no! We’re petrified that whatever the calling, we may end up doing it perfectly! And ‘Why?’ you might ask.

We have permitted our lives to be built on failures and insecurities. Our deepest fears are the feathers in our favorite pillow. Our faults are the foundations of our lives. What would we ever do with the idea of being ‘powerful beyond measure?’ We don’t even have a place to put it.

As I talk with others there is this haunting ‘reality of isolation’ that seems to prevail in many, many lives. Like there is some exclusion principle at work that not only precludes elevated association, but even halts any consideration of it.

The ‘answer’, if I may take a crack at it . . . lies in the background of the picture above, ‘Nothingness’. A dis-association of ourselves from all we think we know. A growing dis-respect for answers that come from some worldly source that claims to know more than we do. Some pseudo-resource that relies on what is right and what is wrong.

Let’s meet . . . on that field.