Do We Live In a Museum?

 A couple of days ago I read something that keeps playing in my mind.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, said Blake, everything would appear to man as it is --- Infinite.... 

Plainly, it would mean the achievement of a new universe, a new order of reality: escape from the terrible museum-like world of daily life, where everything is classified and labelled, and all the graded fluid facts which have no label are ignored. ---Evelyn Underhill

Of course, this also made me think of Paul and his description of looking through a dark glass, and Jesus' urging to not judge by appearances but to use righteous judgement.

What struck me as a new way to describe it is the museum reference. I think it is apt. I notice quite a few do live like this. Categorize it and stuff it in a drawer. Put a label on it and don't consider it again. If it resists this process, ignore it, dismiss it, or just call it nonsense or heresy or unworthy of consideration. This leads to life cut off from so much, in a circular rut.

The questions spring to mind. How to get to the threshold to be aware this is going on, and then how to begin to climb out??? 

I think some kind of internal switch has to turn on, perhaps from a shock that shakes the person to the core or some form of suffering to that breaks open, even a bit, the crusty walls of their personal museum. Possibly it could begin with reading, study and conversation with someone out of the rut. That would be a gentler way, but still painful as the walls have to come down and the categorized drawers emptied. Light has to stream in. What I am reasonably sure of is that it can't be done for a person, it has to be done within a person.

With so much turmoil going on, I hope and pray this is the time that personal museum walls come down in huge numbers. We desperately need awakened people to help the world walk away from violence and chaos, from totalitarian tendencies set in motion, from the dark side.

God bless us all and lead us to The Light. Lead us to see with cleansed eyes and hearts - to see and know Reality.