On a Clear Day and the Enlightened Mind

May this Hub help motivate you in your own efforts to liberate you from the dictates of your ego-conditioning.

“On a clear day, stop and look around you, and you see...” These are the opening lines to a popular song, a song which says much, much more than the usual romantic “love lost” songs we mostly hear. What the writer is saying is that when we see clearly we see what we are.

In the Christian Holy Bible it is reported that Jesus Christ said some of us see “through a glass but darkly.” I’d like to use this analogy by taking it a little further. I’d like you, dear reader, to imagine a line of bottles. Say a dozen or so. The number isn’t important. Neither is the size or shape of the bottles. What is important is the colour of the glass.

Now, with a further stretch of the imagination, I’d like you to take a dozen little men – or whatever number of bottles you have chosen in your mind – and put one little man into each of those bottles. Let us say they all fit in easily; plenty of room. But they are now standing in the bottom of the bottle they are in and are attempting to peer out through the glass.

Next, imagine you are endeavouring to see out of each bottle in turn; you are a man in the bottle.

One bottle is so dark, darker even than a beer bottle or bottle of stout and the man inside can barely make out any light at all. The light source, of course, coming from the outside. Another bottle is of a very slightly lighter hue. Still, it isn’t that much lighter inside. So in this second case a lot of light is not getting through. Also, from the inside it is hard to make out anything outside other than there is some sort of light.

A third bottle, we’ll say this is lighter again. Colour doesn’t matter, but for the sake of the analogy we’ll say it’s a dark green. Another, is an even lighter green, and another lighter still. I think you’ll be getting the picture by now.

The bottles get lighter in colour as we move along the line. Eventually there is no colour, but the glass is frosted as in a bathroom window, so still it is difficult to see through. The frosting gets lighter as we proceed along the line. Less and less complex comes the frosting patterns until...we come to an absolutely clear glass bottle.

Now, as you’ll recall, we put a little man into each bottle. As each of them peers out what do they see. In the darker bottles either nothing or very little. But as the darkness is cleared away, that is, the bottles are lighter and clearer to look through, more and more can be discerned. Eventually, we come to the very last bottle and, lo! the man inside can see clearly. As in the song, he can “see forever, and ever, and every more.”

Now I want you to take a quantum leap in thinking. Imagine that you are one of those little men. In which bottle are you when it comes to realizing that you can, by clearing away the conditioning of your mind – the contents within the glass walls – see as clearly as the man in the very last and clearest. For the man in the very last and clearest is a man who can make a statement like: “you see through a glass but darkly.” The man in the last bottle is experiencing enlightenment. He knows what he is. He is an enlightened man.  He has Christ Consciousness. In this case he is no longer just Jesus, but Jesus 'The Christ.' Likewise, Siddhartha Gautama was no longer just Siddhartha but 'The Buddha.'   

What is being said here is that every person can, by diligent effort, lighten the colour of the glass in his or her particular bottle. Gradually ameliorate all the conditioning that hold him or her back from knowing who he or she truly is.

I could say it’s “worth a shot.” But it is worth far more than that. It is worth a lifetime effort. As a man in a bottle - what are you seeing?

I hope you enjoyed reading On a Clear Day and the Enlightened Mind.

Keep smiling

Tom.