Open Your Eyes, You Can Fly

By Keith Boykin, in spirituality
Monday, June 2 2003, 11:51AM

They say we use only a small part of our brains on a regular basis. I'm not sure if this is true, but I do believe we have enormous untapped power inside of us. Sometimes I forget how powerful I am. Yesterday, a speech, a play, a film, and a song helped to remind me.

The day began at the Lincoln Center, where a friend and I went to hear Marianne Williamson speak at the Sunday morning service of the Unity Center of New York City. Williamson, the author of my favorite book, A Return To Love, spoke eloquently about three principles of life.

First, she said, if you want to go wide, you have to go deep. Second, if you want to move fast, you have to go slow. Third, if you want to be full, you have to be empty.

Marianne Williamson always challenges me to think of the world differently from what I have been taught. I credit her for teaching me to believe that God is love, that we are all born with love and learn fear from others, and that a primary purpose of life is to unlearn the fear and re-learn the love.

No other writer has been more influential in my spiritual path than Marianne Williamson. That such a figure should appear to me in the image of a middle-aged white woman challenges many of my notions of racial consciousness. I accept her wisdom freely, but I am still slowly remembering that wisdom comes from all of us.

Yesterday, Williamson challenged me again. She challenged me to think differently of death. As she explained it, death need not be the end of existence but the beginning of a new way of existence that many of us on earth simply may not understand.

Williamson likened the experience of death to a person without cable television. Just because the television does not pick up a certain channel does not mean the channel does not exist, she said. It simply means we don't have access to it.

So much of our old-fashioned spiritual belief and superstition, she suggested, is not deeply rooted. So her first principle was that we need to probe more deeply into questioning and understanding who we are.

Why, for example, do we so blindly give significance to the ideas of nationhood and country when these identities simply represent artificially constructed boundaries? To look at the world from space is to realize that there are no lines that separate Mexico or Canada from the U.S. The lines we see are the ones we create in our minds.

Williamson also spoke about the memorial to John Lennon a few blocks away at Strawberry Fields in Central Park. The word "Imagine" enshrines Lennon's legacy at the memorial. I could not help thinking of Lennon's famous song that inspired the tribute.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you will join us
And the world will be as one

In a time of war and rumors of war, when politicians use fear to maintain their power, Williamson reminded us that love is the strongest force in the universe. And she challenged us to do more to create a world based on love. If people can create a campaign of hate, why can't we create a campaign of peace?

But love is a dirty word these days. We Americans have come to believe that love is weak and naive. As Williamson said, we have accepted the idea that we must wage war to create peace. Fortunately, Dr. King tells us that peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of justice.

Williamson's second principle -- if you want to move fast, you have to go slow -- only hit me today. I have moved along quite fast for some time now, but I rarely take the time to slow down and process where I am going. Williamson urges meditation as a way to slow down each morning.

I confess I have never meditated for more than a few weeks at a time without getting tired of it. Rather than inspiring me to start my morning, I have always felt meditation slowed me down and delayed me from reading the morning paper or starting my day. Usually the first thing I do when I wake up is to turn on the computer, which is my artificial link to the rest of the world.

Now I am learning that those things I thought were so important really weren't that important at all. Reading the paper every morning only added stress to my early routine, and starting my day without a solid foundation was like driving a car without knowing where I was going.

Today I decided to take a break from my typical routine. I woke up, quietly cleaned the house and meditated for 15 minutes before I started doing any work. Not only did I feel more empowered, I felt liberated from the chains of my self-imposed schedule.

When Williamson mentioned her third principle -- if you want to be full, you have to be empty -- she encouraged us to free our minds from the idea that we always have to be right. Men, she said, are often particularly victimized by the mentality that we must be right all the time.

As she spoke, my friend seated next to me turned and jabbed his finger in my arm. He seemed to be accusing me, and I have to admit that I am guilty of that offense. For a long time I rationalized this behavior because I thought I only spoke when I knew something or when I had something to say.

My rationalization may be partly true, but it obscures a larger reality. That is, I often don't ask questions when I don't know something. Instead, I feel like I have to know so much about so many things that I use my silence as a way not to reveal my ignorance. Williamson reminded me that this attitude is not helpful for personal growth. We can't grow and learn if we don't ask questions, she said.

I left church inspired and resolved to make a change in my life. I met my boyfriend near Lincoln Center, and we walked around town thinking of what to do. We decided to see a Broadway play and took the subway to 50th Street. For the first time in my life, I stood outside the ticket counter booth in Times Square and bought same-day tickets for a show.

We saw Take Me Out, a play about a gay biracial baseball player who nonchalantly comes out and creates a major controversy on his team. Aside from the spontaneity of seeing a play, I was struck by a particular line in the play about the factors of 3 in baseball. Everything in baseball, from the number of strikes to the number of bases to the number of players and innings, seems to be a factor of three.

By itself, that observation would not ordinarily merit my attention. But coupled with Marianne Williamson's three principles of life, I found myself looking for 3s everywhere.

At home last night, I watched the original Matrix film on DVD. I found myself wondering about the selection of three principal characters -- Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity -- to represent the three saviours of the human race. Of course, the same number is used in Christianity to represent the spiritual trinity of the father, the son and the holy spirit.

What does all this mean? I don't know. It may mean something. It may not. It may mean whatever I choose for it to mean. But when I finished watching The Matrix, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth for the night. Standing in front of the mirror, I froze. I stood in place with my right arm extended outward for 10 minutes without moving a limb.

In that unlikely space and time, I meditated. I allowed my mind to wonder and wander into deep dark pockets of uncertainty and truth. I questioned my existence. And I pondered the last prophetic words spoken by Neo.

"I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up the phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."

Neo's challenge harkened back to Marianne Williamson's words earlier in the day. It was a reminder of our power. But this power is hard for us to believe and accept. We have created a world of boundaries and barriers and borders that define us. That world, in itself, is powerful in the limits it imposes on us. But if we have the power to create the world as it exists now, then we must also have the power to re-create the world differently.

Finally in bed, I remembered a new song I heard just last week. In the first song on Lizz Wright's album Salt, she sings, "Open your eyes, you can fly." It reminded me of all the power flowing through me that I have not yet begun to use. The power to love, to grow, to learn, to heal, and yes, to fly.

Then I remembered the scene at the end of The Matrix. In that last moment, Neo emerges from a phone booth, and with his eyes finally open, he puts on a pair of dark sunglasses. Then for the first time, he flies.