Zoom In – Zoom Out

Zoom In – Zoom Out

 

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”  

–Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot:  A Vision Of the Human Future In Space

This is also a great bridge into another ideal I hold very close and consider very relevant – a great tool for self-expansion. I call it the “Zoom-In, Zoom-Out Effect” and, for me, it operates as a vessel into understanding “emptiness.”

As we exist in a world which we deem “separate” from ourselves, we inevitably enter a space of constant judgment. It is not our fault, it is the natural tendency of the thinking mind to label things. We think in words, themselves mediums for describing things that, themselves, are infinite (and thus, empty of concept). A chair illustrates this theme well. Our initial observation says: chair. When we analyze it, though, we realize that it is not inherently a chair. What happens when we remove its legs? At what point does it stop being a chair? Upon enough analysis, we will likely conclude that besides being a chair, this is also wood and metal, produced through the work of humans and nature out of materials with their own back-stories. The trail goes on and on, and eventually we realize that behind our immediate judgment lies a web of interdependence. Nothing exists free of this web, and thus, nothing is single-sided. This dissolves the illusions that 1) things can exist independently and 2) that they are inherently a certain way.

Everything is multi-dimensional, and carrying this wisdom with us can open up many doors. Einstein highlighted this in his theory of relativity and the Buddha uncovered it through meditation. Two drastically different directions of search with a similar result, indicating 1) the infinite human potential and 2) the closed system even of the infinite.

Imagine a super-charged microscope that could magnify everything to whatever degree it liked, and imagine that one of us is under that lens. Perhaps there is no better example for this than one of us… Without any zoom, here we are—these bodies, thoughts, this day-to-day reality. We are very much identified with these things. Now, gradually zoom out; outside our bodies, our houses, towns. All of a sudden, we are ants crawling around, undetectable from one another. Keep zooming out, and we are no longer even detectable by the naked eye, only by a dropped pin. We see the North American continent and know of the social injustice, economic insecurity and political corruption. We see some of the marks our ‘American’ tribe has left on the land. Maybe we see ice caps melting or the Middle-Eastern destruction. All of a sudden, we are in space and we can see this massive floating ball with an incredibly fragile crust. Then that ball starts to shrink until it is just a dwarf next to the other planets. Soon enough, the planet itself is gone completely. Then… well, then the zooming out really starts!

Back in our bodies, we realize that we are these giant conglomerates of cells and bacteria. We are the life-giving life! Soon we are close enough to see each of the trillions of cells as their own beings. They are dying and birthing, eating and excreting. Working tirelessly for the benefit of your being. Then they become massive in scale to the atoms below and then, well, then we start!

But what does any of this mean until we turn our microscope to “astral mode?” Now, what is all of this consciousness?! We have our mere matter – I guess the floor of our consciousness—but then we begin a journey beyond time and space altogether. We enter the depths of the inconceivable, impenetrable nature of our beings. We pass the thinking mind, watch it play with concept and reason, and find ourselves being shuttled along through the heart vessel. We see our physical world as an extension of ourselves. Soon, we are so deep, we drop this model altogether and rest in infinite love. And that is where we re-convene with our physical lens! Infinitely large, infinitely small, and infinitely deep—the dimensions are there, and boy, is this “human” thing something!

Realizing that we are the embodiment of infinite wisdom and simultaneously cogs in an infinite machine is profound. We are the perfect synthesis of the two to, collectively, reach great heights. To me, this quest for collective realization starts by re-defining everything, especially areas where we are having trouble. With each blink, open to a whole new world. With each breath, exhale relief for the suffering in this world. And with each heart-beat, be empowered with the life-force to be of benefit to all beings in and beyond this world.

Watch also:  The Overview Effect – In my opinion, this clip should be mandatory for all students!