Right now it feels like I stand in between the entry point of reality and something more like unreality from which I cannot escape.

I have come one direction for a while, but I need the courage to keep going: to answer the call to see beyond what I already know – beyond what captures the hearts and imaginations of the world around. I would like to illustrate this subtle distinction within a fiction story, but for now, I must be content that something like what I would communicate is present in the works of George MacDonald and many of the great poets who have gone before.

It is not so often present in the modern world where this afternoon I browsed through a free magazine wondering at the portraits of women and men showcasing luxurious clothing and accessories. I had expected to find some taste of beauty,  but I found nearly all of them to contain little more than a weak attempt at capturing the allure of sexuality.

From Defined Un-reality

There must be a way to capture and communicate something more real than this, I thought. Though I still question whether it is possible for the general audience to appreciate the subtle difference enough to demand a change. It is possible to find beauty in the human form, but there are some styles of presentation that lend themselves more easily to lust than to admiration.

Naturally, if the intention of the photographer is to awaken desire within a person for whatever is on the page, then the image has succeeded whether it awakens love or lust. Beauty, where it is present in any measure, demands such a response. However, the context I saw called the individual toward consuming a product, which will neither satisfy the desire awakened by the image nor the overall human desire that is hijacked by the whole interaction.

To…

We all should be craving something. I think that something is wholeness, or connection forged by the nature of love that draws all things closer rather than pushing them further apart. How is it possible to capture that?

In words, I think it could be the real definition of purity: being of one substance without contamination by any other. At least it would be a more effective definition than the idea of purity being the absence of something impure. Such ambiguity is equally unhelpful as defining mortality by the absence of immorality. Both are useless because the definitions communicate only what they are not.

To what, then, are we called? I don’t think it is to the image itself, but to something that it represents. When I discover that the image contains only a shallow deception, I am no longer satisfied by what I see…and so I move on, like most people, seeking something new, something more, something that will satisfy the endless craving for something a little bit more real.

It must be possible to create an image representing a truth that will capture the attention of the observer more powerfully. “Here, at last, is something real!” But even this cannot be tied to a product or the context will short-circuit the fullness of what the image represents.

The only exception I see is a product that somehow extended a similar invitation to pursue that which the image represented. True beauty, as a ‘purchasable’ product, might become the bait that lures individuals out of the matrix into the joy of life in all its chaos and hardship. Unlike a sexual high, this undefined thrill cannot be clearly articulated as each one must encounter the reality from a particular vantage point of maturity or immaturity.

Mysterious Reality

Can the invitation be offered to those who are not ready to receive it? Jesus said, “do not cast your pearls before swine” or they will be destroyed along with you (Matthew 7:6).

Must truth, then, be hidden in plain sight? It’s hard to know what you don’t already know.

Can a pathway to discovery be synthesized from the journey of all those who have gone before? The process seems almost exclusively individualized.

Perhaps it is possible to make space for the process and encourage its progress, though it is impossible to tell what this might look like. Perhaps the outcome could be defined as wholeness, but I think for most this is a lifelong journey.

Education as the Invitation

So what kind of structure could be designed to support it throughout a lifetime? Education toward wholeness cannot happen in a moment or else whatever hardens holds the extreme risk of shattering into nothing, taking life with it. Within the constraints of time and place, I consider it possible only to serve the individual with tools, examples, and inspiration – forms of learning and the freedom to customize their design and use.

Perhaps instruction toward some end common to most of humanity might be beneficial. However, too much of this tends toward defining what humanity is, and such a feat is impossible if not destructive. Still, I think there must be some allure – some truth that has the power to overwhelm the deception with an invitation to reality. Even if it evades definition, it must be possible to find.

I have not discovered it, though I have thought myself close to it. I have seen something of it, I have tasted it, shuddered at its presence, felt overwhelmed by something yet beyond my reach though it seemed momentarily tangible. It – whatever it is – speaks to something fundamentally and mysteriously human. A call or invitation echoing through its invisible chambers might invade the waves of light and sound that flood the contemporary human experience with a hint – just a hint – of something real behind what we think we know.

To Seek Something More

To the one blessed with the ability to translate from one world into the other, all the riches of the world might begin to flow. For that which is, is. And to lay hold of it just partially is to align with the current of history and humanity in a way that invites the inevitable to participate with the possible in the presentation of something more beautiful.

Such an invitation could not be overlooked, ignored, or refused, except at the expense of the one who remains blinded by that which has no substance. But the choice of ignorance must still appeal to those who lack the diligence to investigate what is real. The invitation is the only thing that can be received without effort. The reality must be acquired through effort. The first may be free; the second will cost the life of the one who desires it.

The response, therefore, will not only be strongly favorable for those who answer, it will be strongly distasteful for those who try to pretend it never came. There is no unhearing what has been heard or unseeing what has been seen, but the struggle to forget may seem more accessible than the struggle to forge a life, and those who acquiesce to indolence soon hate those who have chosen otherwise.

A clear invitation thus becomes a detestable reminder to those who continually reject the offer. The one who extends it, therefore, must do so with the cunning of a serpent and the gentleness of a dove. Otherwise, there will be no occasion to enjoy the benefit or reap the fruits of what has been unlocked.