Believing is Seeing

Published: Oct. 26, 2009, 2:28 a.m.

b'Clay Nelson enjoys the humour of Mark\'s story of Bartimaeus who may be blind but has vision while looking at how our beliefs determine what reality we see and our experience of life. Unintentionally he explores more Wisdom for Dummies. \\n\\n"What I do know is that after reading Bourgeault\\u2019s The Wisdom Jesus, I feel like the two young fish who while swimming along happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way. He nods at them and asks, "Morning, boys, how\'s the water?" The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"[i]\\n \\nJesus, the wisdom teacher has brought me up short. By asking about the water, he changed my beliefs. I no longer believe I am the absolute centre of the universe as we were all hardwired at birth to think. I now believe Jesus\\u2019 intent was to wise us up; not to become our personal saviour. He wanted to challenge our assumptions about reality. He wanted to raise our consciousness to a level where we see the falseness of \\u201cotherness.\\u201d The idea that life is all about us versus everything else. He wanted us to discover that we are part of a greater whole: one with each other and our environment, and all is divine love."\\n\\nFull text and video links at http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/nav.php?sid=503&id=976.'