Heroes Not Zombies

There’s what some people call a spiritual practice taught by the Classical Greek philosophers. It’s called “The view from on high”. I thought of that when I looked, again, at this photo which I took from the train crossing the Alps last year.

The idea of the view from on high, is about taking an overview. It’s about seeing the context of something, seeing the “bigger picture”. We can be too close to something, so close in fact that we can’t “see the wood for the trees”. The answer is to go higher for a more comprehensive perspective.

Although the Greeks didn’t know it, this is advice to access your right hemisphere. The left hemisphere of the brain has a very narrow focus. It enables us to zoom in, separate out elements, and grasp what we are looking at. But the right hemisphere takes in the context, sees the connections, enables a more holistic understanding.

Of course, it’s best when we use our whole brain, not just half, but, sadly, we’ve developed the habit in our cultures of thinking the left hemisphere knows best. It doesn’t. It only helps us when we take its “re-presentation” of reality back into the right hemisphere, to situate it in the whole.

Reality is not made up of pieces which are assembled. Reality is a whole, in constant flow and change. Stepping up a level and taking “the view from on high”, can help us to appreciate that.