What's Behind Your Book Cover
Written by: Guest Contributor; Ray Shipka
Life, people, parents, etc; have a profound way of teaching us that it’s only what's on the outside that counts.
Our society has TV commercials, magazine pictures, models, gym ads and even clothing mannequins looking like what we have been lead to believe is perfect, or the gifted, the smartest, the nicest, the most successful, etc.
We more often than not judge people from what we see on the outside rather than learning what's on the inside. The cover is just the cover, it has nothing to do with the soul that is in the inside.
She is very nice looking, so she has to be nice. He’s good looking and drives an expensive car, so he must be very successful.
Look at that panhandler. Wow, he is so dirty and bad looking, so he must be trouble; stay away from him and surely you couldn't think that you would be able to have a intelligent conversation with someone like that? Don't even waste your time.
If you get too close you may catch what he or she has. If you catch what he or she has, you could end up looking like or being like them.
In a lot of cases, it’s quite the opposite, so never be so quick to assume and judge.
Theres a saying that goes, { NEVER JUDGE A BOOK BY IT’S COVER } and that holds true with all people. How could you possibly know what’s behind the door unless you knock and they open it! Once it’s open, really take a look.
Now, people are like a book, sometimes you can’t read one chapter and know if you like the book. Sometimes it takes you right to the very last paragraph before that overwhelming, wow, fills your heart - what an amazing loving soul this person is.
How could I have not known, how could I have been so shallow that I had expected them not to have a real story like mine.
Most people are not going to just let you in to see what's inside their heart. But if your heart is true, and your intentions are kind and loving, they will, with time, let you in to have a peek.
Maybe what you see on the outside isn’t even close to the real beauty that lays on the inside. People have been programmed to polish their outside and keep it shiny as long possible, but have never taken the time to polish their inside.
They haven't learned or been taught how to. Polishing the inside takes work, a lot of work. And with that work comes lessons and more lessons.
Some we may like and others we may not like; but once we catch on, the real magic happens.
The magic is that we stop looking and prejudging people. We start taking the steps to polish our insides.
We have no right to judge anyone, as we are each on our own separate journey, and god is the only one that has real knowledge of our inner story.
Here is a concept that I would like to share. I speak of polishing the heart into a mirror, so that through our love we can reflect the heart on everything.
This is one practice, that in time, can help us make the necessary agreement between our being and our humanness.
By its very nature, living in the world creates a film over our heart - while our thoroughness of being, and our gestures of love remove that film.
There is no arrival in this process. The goal isn't to stay clean or get dirty, but to stay engaged in the unending transformative cycle of life.
And when we can't summon the effort or courage to clean the film from our heart, there is always the necessary rain by which life will clean and refresh itself.
In this way, the work of being and the inevitable friction of becoming are inextricably knit together.
We all film the heart and we all polish the heart. We all move between these points of wakefulness and weariness.
All the while, the resources of life wait like a great sea to cleanse us.
This is why we polish the heart into a mirror - to open and touch the place within us where all life lives; where all hearts feel, where all things resound through the inlet of our soul.
The endless practice here is to live out a constant commitment to aliveness, to stay engaged in the ongoing journey of being filmed over, only to be scoured into a clear vessel, again and again.
