Several blind men visiting a zoo are being introduced to an elephant. They are led to the beast and begin groping about to get some idea of what the elephant looks like. One places his hand on its trunk and exclaims: "It's like a snake!" Another feels a leg and says: "No, it's like a tree!" Yet another has a hand on the elephant's side and offers: "It's like a wall!" This is an example of how most of the population communicates about their points of view.

Another example is visiting the Grand Canyon. Imagine standing on the rim and beholding the vista before you and absorbing the majestic beauty of Mother Nature's handiwork. You could spend hours and hours picking out details and appreciating the view and come away awed by what you saw.

If you had gone to the rim with a group of people and began communicating about what you were beholding, you would learn that everyone around you had a different point of view. Each individual within the group saw the canyon somewhat differently and, if honest communication took place, all present would have an enhanced view through the sharing of what they beheld. The point is that it is not the view that changes through communication. It will remain what it is. It is the human mind that changes by absorbing more meaning from communicating with others.

All of us probably know people who will hold on to their view of an elephant being like a snake or a tree. It is virtually impossible to make such people "change their mind." They are in a comfort zone that prevents them from accepting more of the available view. They will tenaciously hang on to their point of view until they are shocked into awareness. It is senseless for anyone to attempt changing another's point of view. It is up to them to change their own mind. This can be achieved by communicating information that forces them to think. Everyone has that capability but not all have the willingness to delve deeper into the view. People who do not want to understand more of their existence are simply allowing life to pass them by and we should also pass them by.

"Learn to see; everything is connected." Leonardo da Vinci.

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." Carl Jung.

There is absolutely no independence of any sort in the Universal View. Everything we behold and experience is interdependent. For everything, there is a reason for being and that purpose must be connected somehow and interact with its environment in order to "BE" what it is. The only element in the Universal View that attempts to separate itself from it is the human ego. It is the sole cause of all human strife and pain.

The Dalai Lama is in New York and is told that the best hot dog in the world is available at a Central Park stand. After his meeting, he requests to be taken to the vendor to try the food. When his turn comes, he advances to the vendor:

"What'll it be, Mac?" asks the vendor.
"One -- with everything." Replies the Dalai Lama.

Some egos will have trouble making the connection in this joke. The Dalai Lama actually is saying the same thing Leonardo said, and Gautama Siddartha, the first Buddha, had realized it more than two thousand years prior. Carl Jung and many other prominent figures also know about this connectivity. Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein are two of the more recent.

Ego is an artificial (man-made) mind.

The Flea Circus

Zig Ziglar is a good ol' boy from Texas and a motivational speaker. I received a ticket from corporate to attend one of his gigs at a hotel near O'Hare and enthusiastically welcomed the opportunity to see and hear him in person. He was a big part of the self-help movement along with Hill, Mandino, Stone, Peale and others. He has a wonderful way of blending his talks with homey anecdotes that make sense. One of these anecdotes is about a flea circus. He begins,

"In the old days, when entertainment was hard to come by, traveling circuses would wend their way from town to town across the West and set up camp just outside each burg. They would form a midway of tents for the folks to amble past. Oddities and performers would be contained in the tents, like bearded ladies, strong men, snake boys, etc. and the populace would pay some charge to enter. Usually, one of the tents had a flea circus.

The barker outside would entice the folks to enter and, when the tent was full, he would retreat into it and close the entry. Inside were a table covered with a white tablecloth and a large jar atop it covered by another white cloth. The man would uncover the jar, say a few words, uncap the jar and dump a bunch of fleas onto the tablecloth. The fleas would begin jumping up and down, but would not leave the tabletop. Applause and egress."

Zig would continue by describing how a flea trainer would achieve this feat. The trainer would catch a bunch of fleas and place them in the jar and watch and wait. Initially, the little beasties would jump as hard as they could to get away, but they would bump against the top and sides of the jar. After a while, they realized they could hurt themselves, so they limited their jumps to stop just short of hitting the jar. Voila -- a flea circus! Zig ends his anecdote by asking the group: "What would you rather be, a flea or a flea trainer?"

(My first thought: "I want to break jars!")

The jar in this anecdote represents the limitations the ego places upon itself. It should be understood that ego jars come in many sizes, from minuscule to gigantic. It seems as though a huge ego was able to gather many votes from the minuscule in the 2016 Federal election. The smaller the jar, the easier it is to control the inhabitant ego. (That's my point of view.)

"Men are not prisoners of Fate, but only prisoners in their own mind." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Wisdom begins with the definition of terms." - Socrates.

"The dumbing down of Americans is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance." - Carl Sagan

Debugging the ego

We are all programmed along with all other life. As with all programs containing bugs, the desired result from our actions is often not what we expected. A program is a process that contains instructions to achieve a particular goal, or result. This process works exactly the same as our thought process and is replicated in a computer with zeroes and ones. We call them zeroes and ones, but the method we use to differentiate them is to test whether a bit is on or off. A string of zeroes and ones generates what Tesla would call a vibration which is the basic unit of all communication. Good vibes are what we seek.

Good vibes come from harmony and bad vibes come from dissonance. Our brains are hard-coded to tell the difference. The ego is called upon to interpret these vibrations and activate a sequence of instructions to either maintain harmony or to balance dissonance. Because the ego is an artificial mind limited by its jar of understanding, unusual results may be created when faulty thinking, faulty beliefs, faulty values and the like are used to make a decision. The only way to avoid hasty and rash reaction to incoming vibrations is to prevent the ego from making the decisions. It should be the navigator of our worldly experience, not the driver. The ego's point of view is a starting point, not a result. The view doesn't really care what the ego thinks or what position it wants to occupy when beholding whatever part of the view it contemplates.

If we seek wisdom and Socrates is correct, "Point of View" is the term we should define. The word "point" has numerous dictionary definitions, but for this exercise, we will use the Cambridge Dictionary definition of a geometric point -- an exact location in space that has no size. We can imagine ourselves in the center of our ego's universe and call this point HERE.

In order to contemplate the view, we have to "pay attention." When we pay attention to something, someone or some task, we are paying with our TIME. We focus in the moment we call NOW. Our consciousness always resides in the HERE and NOW. Only the ego can stray from this reality into any number of fantasies. Here and now actually mean Infinity and Eternity. That is where Universal Consciousness can be found.

The view is subject to many interpretations at many levels. Linguistics, semantics and literacy vary in their ability to communicate meaning from one ego to another. Most conversational language contains few, if any, deep concepts about existence or the scope of the view it occupies. Communication is intended to reach equitable understanding in the exchange of information among the participants. That seldom happens if the ego is in paranoid denial. That is why it is important to break jars. There is no way ego can break free and see the totality of existence while it cowers in its self-made prison.

"To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others." - Tony Robbins

Instead of a jar, we can envision egos being trapped in a conic mind prison. This cone has a circular staircase leading upwards and has platforms at various levels that individuals can climb to. Each level has a window that looks out into the outside world. The higher the level, the bigger the window. At the very top of the cone is an opening where a 360 degree view is available. That is the only place where a complete view can be had. The windows beneath the opening can only offer a partial view.

If we imagine this cone to contain the world's population, there will be groups of egos at each platform, looking at the outside world with different perspectives of what it means. Adventurous egos unsatisfied with the group view will attempt to climb further upward to get more of the view. Others will dally at various platforms and be complacent and satisfied with what they and the rest of their group agree upon. This stratification differs based upon a number of elements. Social, economic, intelligence, emotional and understanding stratifications will change the population on each platform depending on the discussion and communication of each group. Each ego can belong to many groups.

The only way to move up into the light is to let go of thoughts and ideas that hold the ego prisoner. Ego's tendency is to hold on, but the only way to rise is to let go of incorrect or incomplete views. If we wish to be enlightened when we reach the opening, we must release false values, false beliefs and false ideas and allow the Universal Consciousness to flow through us. We can now achieve Nirvana, Heaven, or Paradise -- Enlightenment is beholding the Universal View and is available when we reach the opening.

The enlightened man cannot be enslaved - that is the difficulty - and he cannot be imprisoned.... Every genius who has known something of the inner is bound to be a little difficult to be absorbed; he is going to be an upsetting force. He is seen as a rebel by most egos. The masses don't want to be disturbed, even though they may be in misery; they are in misery, but they are accustomed to the misery. And anybody who is not miserable looks like a stranger.

The enlightened man is the greatest stranger in the world; he does not seem to belong to anybody. No organization confines him, no community, no society, and no nation.

Whether he is wealthy or poor, the Rebel is really an emperor because he has broken the chains of society's repressive conditioning and opinions. He has formed himself by embracing all the colors of the rainbow, emerging from the dark and formless roots of his unconscious past and growing wings to fly into the sky. His very way of being is rebellious - not because he is fighting against anybody or anything, but because he has discovered his own true nature and is determined to live in accordance with it. The eagle is his spirit animal, a messenger between earth and sky.

The Rebel challenges us to be courageous enough to take responsibility for who we are and to live our truth. Universal Truth is immutable, regardless of how egos choose to relate to it.

The View

Our eyes are a wondrous construction of evolution. Although they interpret only a small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum (visible light,) they allow us to behold the creations of Mother Earth. They are only receptors, though, and simply submit the light vibrations to the brain in order to create images in our mind. All that we think we "see" is the reflection of our own mind, in essence, the reflection of our thoughts. Enlightenment is understanding that our human form is a conduit for Universal Consciousness to express itself. Egotism tries to prevent that view from entering its jar.

Helen Keller was blind and deaf from early childhood. She graduated from Radcliffe College with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She wrote fourteen books, visited over 40 countries and helped found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU.) She must have had some wonderful thoughts to behold within her mind. Best quote from Ms. Keller:

"The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision."