Morning Pogue,

It’s another Monday and, after several letters on previous Mondays, I’m still thinking about Jonathon Livingston Seagull. I’m not going to write a letter to him today but he has left me thinking about love, the so called “highest lesson” and the learning I can gain by studying his ascension from a young angry curious bird to the position of the “Great Gull” in the eyes and thoughts of others.

What have I learnt?

That Jonathon unwittingly walk a pathway to self understanding and that it was his knowledge of self that eventually allowed, indeed led, to the knowledge of love. And as I have read around this subject in the weeks just passed I have found others who have learnt the same lesson, none more so than Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen Buddhist Monk and teacher.

It was Nhat Hanh’s conviction that unless we are able to understand ourselves then we have no route by which to pursue love, or understand others for that matter. It is in the deep understanding of self, self-knowledge, that we become aware of the fundamentals of ourselves. Why we do and think the things we do. What promotes our actions (remember, every action is preceded by a thought) at the most elemental levels. This is no easy learning and Jonathon was to spend the entirety of his first life in plundering ever deeper levels of understanding, not that he could love but rather that he could be the very best version of what he was. This self understanding, and the excellence of flight it led to, were part of the self learning that prepared Jonathon to learn Love.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani, Talmudic tractate Berakhot (55b.)

It is only by intimate understanding of our own existence, our true potential, our motivations and what underpins these, the source of our joy and indeed and in particularly the source of our pain, that we can possibly begin to understand why we act and respond in the way we do. And only in understanding our own motivation and where it finds its roots can we begin to openly receive others. As the Buddha taught “your love for the other, your ability to love another person, depends on your ability to love yourself”. To love yourself have you first not got to understand yourself and Jonathon pushed himself to the limits of self understanding.

If you don’t understand yourself you don’t understand anybody else.

Nikki Giovanni, A Dialogue (James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni)

So this week let us both try and be witnesses to our actions and thoughts. Let us take time to ask: “Why did I do/think that?” Let us delve deeper into our actions and thoughts to try and capture the moment in our experience that sponsored them. It will be the beginning of an interesting and challenging journey and I imagine there will be some depths to delve into before certain things begin to gain even a veneer of understanding. Should we arrive there, then we will have gained a knowledge that will allow us to begin to realise that the actions of others often stem from places we do not know and, so, temper our reactions and judgements accordingly. We may be able to love the other in a way that we have not done so previously.

I think we will need to practice mindfulness in the days ahead if we wish to walk this path and there’s another lesson for us. Who ever said “life’s for the learning” was wiser than she knew!

Yours, standing on a precipice of self knowledge,

Wic.