“You see what you want to see.
You hear what you want to hear.”
-The Rock Man from The Point
In February 1971 I happened upon The Point by the artist Harry Nielson. I was 16 years old at the time. I got up from the couch that night to flip channels on the TV in the den and there it was. It was a lucky night for me and countless others. The Point was an animated story about a boy named Oblio who was born with a round head in a village of pointed ones. Because he was different, the evil-minded Count, who had the pointiest head of all, grew very angry after Oblio and his dog Arrow beat his son in a game of triangles. The Count then made the case that the “round headed boy” should be banished. The King, with great reluctance, agreed and Oblio and his dog Arrow were sent to the Pointless Forest.
So young Oblio heads off on the hero’s journey, meeting magical characters along the way, and he learns that “you don’t have to have a point to have a point.” It doesn’t take him very long and he returns to the village. The hero brings home the knowledge that everything indeed has a point and The King and the people agree. The Count, his son, and everyone else lose their pointed heads while Oblio gains one. The people rejoiced and the Count, whose attachment to his point and his power is great, sleeks off never to be heard from again. It was a wonderful story, with beautiful images and Nielson’s marvelous original sound track.
Being 16 years old was a transitional time for me. I woke up out of my teenage slumber and became “aware.” This was happening to many young people around my age at that time. A wave of consciousness had swelled and some of us, without knowing how, caught the wave and were on the crest and flying. The Point had come at the right moment. It acted as a touchstone which propelled and lifted me up. There would be many such touchstones to come. For me catching this wave of awareness translated into moving beyond my family and neighborhood identity and into a larger feeling of being connected with a much larger group. I began to read more and play sports less. I read poetry, listened to new music, became interested in the great books and in social justice. I felt very alive. That summer of 71 I grew my hair longer and moved with two friends to a cottage in Beach Haven, NJ, working nights as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant and surfing in the morning. Rode my bike everywhere. I grew intensely curious about the world around me and wanted to understand it all. It was marvelous! That feeling, that energy, grew in me for many years and it shaped who I became.
My peers and other people like my teachers approached me differently in my senior year. They asked me questions in class and let me explore various interests. I went from a C student to an A student. I developed an insatiable appetite for knowledge. I graduated from high school in 1972 and went to Belknap College in Centre Harbor, New Hampshire. Belknap was “a hippie college,” with 300 or so free spirits. I fit right in and quickly adapted to living without the restrictions of home, societal norms, and the rules of public high school with its dress codes and punitive nature. Feeling liberated and emboldened I was ready to explore new worlds.
In 1974 my explorations discovered Transcendental Meditation, which I then started and never stopped; a year and a half after that, I met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. For me it was love at first sight as he filled me with light and happiness. Maharishi said, “The world is as we are.” I think what he meant was that we can only see the world through the filters of our consciousness. If we are happy and positive then we see the world in that light. If we are depressed and troubled the whole world reflects that back to us. Maharishi also reminded us that whatever we put our attention on grows stronger in our life. If we think or dwell on negative things, negativity grows within. We have that choice to create our lives through cultivating our power of attention. What this means is that the six billion people on the planet have each created their own reality or point of view. Each of us shares parts of our reality with others, be they family, friends, or tribal groups and when we meet these people we feel at home. People outside this group, people living with a different set of beliefs, points of view or reality, we may not relate to and our interest and attention will not flow to them.
Even with this, we can grow into appreciation that we are all human beings and experience the same emotions, like love, happiness, anger, and despair. As humans we also share the same needs, such as air to breath, and food and water to drink. We need clothes and shelter. And we can expand from this to embrace all of Life. We can see that every creature, be it insects, reptiles, fish, birds or mammals, are expressions of Life and that we share Life with them. We can still go further in finding connection. We can see that there is a universal awareness or consciousness and that every one of us embodies that awareness and expresses it with our every thought and movement. This sharing of Life and Consciousness is what brings us to appreciating the sacred wisdom that has been passed down from generation to generation. “E Pluralist Unum”, or “one from many”. It’s the unity and the diversity of Life that brings joys and sorrows. The unity binds us in oneness and the diversity brings us the richness of experience.
Each of us needs to discover who we are and how to connect back to wholeness. This is the path we’re on. It’s the perennial path. It’s the cosmic journey. Walt Whitman put it this way in his poem, “Song of the Open Road”:
To know the universe as a road, many roads, as roads for traveling souls.
All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments — all that
was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe,
falls into niches or corners before the procession
of souls along the grand roads of the universe.
Wherever you find yourself, living in the same house where you were born or living two continents away, universal themes abound. Don’t get stuck in any one theme, but explore it and enjoy it and then transcend it and explore the next. Pay your bills, keep being responsible and upright. But wherever you are, transcend. Read, travel, explore, be curious, and be in love with yourself and everyone around you. Don’t just smell the flowers but grow them. Make your world beautiful.
And most importantly, when you’re tired, rest. Enjoyment disappears when we’re tired. Appreciation dims when we overdo it. Life is meant to be lived fully and thoroughly enjoyed.
Don’t let life become a burden. Talk to someone. Learn TM and practice it twice a day. Transcending thought is different than observing thoughts. Do some yoga. Take a walk in the woods or on the beach. Get up early and see the sunrise. Have lunch with a friend. Say hi to the person sitting next to you on the bus. Put your iPhone away. Take your noise cancelling headphones off and stow them in your bag. Connect with everyone with a smile, a nod, or a word. Let Life live you. Let Love be the currency you live on. I promise you, do all of this and you will be floating in waves of fulfillment and bliss.
For your enjoyment checkout the link below the Rock Man meeting Oblio and Arrow
