narnia

 

By Andrew Peers

A couple of years ago I started a Facebook page called The Longing Look.

Actually the full name is The Order of the Longing Look, just in case you or anyone else wants to search for it. I did this by way of expressing outwardly what had rather dramatically been revealed to me inwardly. At the time, I didn’t understand what the dream was supposed to signify exactly, though what I saw and heard that night was supremely clear: after gaining access to the inner sanctum of a chapel, I read the name: The Order of the Longing Look out loud from a fat book lying open on the table there.

I wasn’t quite sure how relevant these words were in a world full of symbols of fragmentation and division, be that the literal division of the ground in an earthquake, divisions in society, relationships or simply in myself.

There are indeed periods of apparent harmony and union, but they all eventually go on to dissipate again.

When I consider this, I might fall into depression. If this really is all there is, I could even get suicidal. Maybe this is why the dream happened to me—who knows? Essentially, The Longing Look has become a source of solace. It reminds me to look at all this division from a place within, a place that is completely abstracted from whatever appears to be going on at the time.

This place could be described as a place of thoughtless spaciousness, of limitlessness, my limitlessness, already perfect, already at home because it never left home, never divided. Perhaps nature provides the most favourable conditions to know this, as it makes no demands. In the silence and quietude of nature, it is easier to find the opening. The opening just appears.

As it is my own true nature, it is of course in the bustling city too.

This place is often described as the “heart” in many religious traditions, yet it goes beyond religion, and certainly cannot be contained by it. This place is not what society often refers to when it talks about the contraction of passion. No, this place that my dream was telling me about, has everything to do with the way the world is regarded.

Put simply, it is how we look. Awakening to what our ancestors called second sight is to enter the limitless space of who I truly am and to look on the world from there. Seeing the world from there leads to thinking differently about it.

So the idea behind the Facebook page is to remind myself and others to look on the world from this place, the place that has already overcome the world. It is a modest step to changing the way the world is thought about on a personal individual level, the only place where peace can begin.

Longing is felt because what is seen on the news hardly reflects the natural goodness of the human being. It is a longing for peace for all, and the tender expression of compassion for those who do not yet see, who are not even looking.

 

Editor: Ty H Phillips

Photo: (source)

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