"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them," says Albert Einstein

The places where we are fixed in our mind and perception are interesting.  We may be focused on compassion vs personal responsibility, liberal vs. conservative, etc..  When we look at a wooden sculpture we may be feeling into its curves or perhaps noticing the hardness of its structure.  What compels us to have the sorts of experiences that we do.  Why do we get drawn in to see the world so differently? Or so similarly? 

I was once at a talk with Rabbi Mark Gafni and Ken Wilber.  A young man in the audience asked a question, 'How do you know when to serve'.  I am paraphrasing according to my memory but I think I have it down pretty accurately.  Rabbi Gafni said something that I believe about life, 'There is no one way.  You have to be present in the moment (to see, know, discern, feel, etc.).  In one moment it may be appropriate to give one man $100 and in another moment it may be appropriate to give one hundred men one dollar.'  I think the answer to many questions is 'there is no one way.   I need to be present to see what is really appropriate in the moment.' 

This is something I have been learning about.  Life is generally much more complex than breaking things down to ideas that 'all republicans are racists' or that 'all liberals are wasteful'.  And when we settle ourselves that way, it seems we sometimes paint the world via the lens we have chosen so it just keeps making us more and more certain that we are wearing the right glasses.  'See... there's the proof' I say as I look through my people who x are x lens.  Well, it works some of the time.  But then some of the time we may not be seeing what's actually, really there because our lenses screen it out and we feel comfortable in them.  What we experience in them represents what we know and understand.

All of us have gifts to share/contributions to make 'and' most of us also have much to learn, a varied array of things in life that we are ignorant of.  In my perception we can't know it all but we can learn from each other.  I believe we are naturally drawn to the things we most need to learn about... sometimes to my own dismay when it is challenging.  And at the same time our beliefs and filters are determining what we are able to view and it becomes more limited.  This is another type of paradox that holds us until our beliefs and filters start to include the validity of both sides of the paradox and allow the wholeness of the concepts.  I am liberal and conservative, for example.  I need both in different ways at different times etc. 

Moving beyond paradox gives us a wider palette of colors to paint with or a wider array of lenses and filters to view the world with.  Sort of like changing the world from black and white to full color.

If problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them, as Einstein said,

then as the Sister Hazel song goes, 'if you want to be somebody else, if you're tired of fighting battles with yourself, if you want to be somebody else, change your mind.'

I can't know everything.  I can't do everything. I probably can't understand everything.  But I can know a little more, do a little more, and understand a little more and experience even more 'color' in life.