My spiritual Teacher used to tell this story.
Imagine that you are lost in a deep valley, surrounded by thickly growing bushes and trees. You are able to see a short distance ahead and on the sides, because of the dense forest surrounding you. You are preoccupied with protecting yourself and satisfying your immediate needs. You are concerned with finding water, food, shelter and protections from the animals. You feel frightened and desperate, wondering how you will ever find your way out.
After a considerable struggle you finally climb to the top of the ridge surrounding the valley. There your field of awareness is extended and you can look down to where you were previously standing. From this higher point you see a winding stream and some fruit trees just a short distance off from where you had been. When you were in the valley the water and trees were unknown. For you they did not exist. The fear of suffering from thirst and hunger was very real to you then. But from a larger perspective at the top of the ridge you can see that there was no need to be concerned at all. Your problems were created by your own imagination by the narrowness of your perception.
From the ridge where you are now standing you can see even higher plateaus surrounding you, and you wonder what lies beyond them. Though your perspective is greater than it was before, it is still far from all encompassing. You are still preoccupied with finding your way out of the wilderness and seeking shelter. Though your field of vision has been enlarged and your anxieties somewhat reduced, many uncertainties remain. so you begin to make your way toward a higher vantage point. It take considerable time and effort to reach it, but when you finally climb, exhausted , to the top of a large hill, your efforts are rewarded by a still greater perspective and you are overjoyed to see in the distance a trail and beyond it, still further, the smoke of some tents of some campers.
Each time that you climb to a higher vantage point the range of your vision is enlarged and your understanding of the entire situation is altered. You see things from a more encompassing perspective which allows you to be less concerned and anxious and enables you to relate to your environment in terms of how it really is rather than in terms of how you imagined it to be from a more limited point of view.
Namaste,
Sunshine Yoga Academy