“The spiritual journey is much like the physical journeys of our lives. While you may return to the same territory, you will never see it with the same eyes.”
–Aphorism 5
It is harder to see when considering those things and places we see every day, or every week. Still, it has been my experience that when I revisit places that I have not seen for some time, they do not seem the same. Sometimes, of course, it is because they have changed – a park that you visit for the first time in years will have changes in trees, in furniture, maybe even in the routes of paths. Returning to your school in adulthood, buildings may have been demolished and replaced, uniforms altered, the behaviour of staff and pupils altered. But that’s not all there is to the difference.
Consider instead when you visit something that has not changed much, or at all. A wild landscape, a coastline, or even those times when somewhere that you might expect to have changed has not done so. Still, it doesn’t look, feel, seem the same as you remember it. It may not have changed, but unavoidably, you have. In a very real sense, you are not the same person you were the last time you were there.
Different details seem important. Things seem larger or smaller because you are impressed by different things. New experiences in the meantime mean you are reminded of different things by seemingly random shapes and patterns. Better understanding of the experiences of others means you see things in a new light.
This is greatest when the time between visits is long, and the change in ourselves is greatest. But sometimes the change is enough to make a striking difference in as little as a week, or a day. When something has happened to us that changes our outlook on something fundamentally, sometimes we don’t even realise it until we see something that we are forced to see differently in light of that change.
That much is an observation on human experience, and valuable enough on its own. The aphorism, however, extends the principle to our spiritual experience, as well as our experience of the mundane world. Our spiritual journey involves going over a range of territory – scripture, spiritual writings, ethical questions – that, each time we tread that particular piece of ground, we see as we are then, and understand as we are then.
Revisiting the same thing – the same part of scripture, the same book, the same ethical question – as our spiritual journey progresses, we experience it differently. We understand it differently. And it presents a new, different opportunity for growth than it did before.
If Bible reading is your thing, space out your times revisiting a particular passage – especially ones that you struggled with. If you read the spiritual writings of others, re-read books as your journey progresses. As you ponder ethics, or even theology, accept that the answers you come to are only ever your answer at that time, and that your answer is likely to be differently, subtly or significantly, later in your journey.
Never, ever dismiss a particular area of spiritual journey or reflection, simply because you have been through it and learned what you could at the time. There is always more to be learned, more to be experienced, when you revisit with changed eyes.
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