21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

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problem, the activists who want to make external things better. They are not at home to themselves — but insist on trying to lead others home. This is why things stay the same. Solutions imposed from outside are not solutions. They bring change — but not transformation. For you cannot promote transformation beyond the degree of internal transformation of yourself.’

Simon Parke — The Beautiful Life (my emphasis).

It is said by some that art and angels are the messengers between the unseen world and the world of phenomena. (The original meaning of the Greek ‘daimon’ was as a messenger between the divine and human worlds.) Whether you choose to believe in angels, or agree with this function of art, the idea still stands that somehow mystery is communicated to us. If it were not so, there would be no becoming — indeed no world at all. Part of seeing is to see the ‘angels’ — those people we meet who communicate something from beyond themselves. It is the ‘mustard seed moments’ of which Simon Parke speaks. A truth is brought to us just at a time when we are ready to receive it. Likewise, for art. The artist, in helping us to see, opens us to new beauty, and then the cascading consequences of this where further beauty is perceived and creativity inspired. Perhaps our spirit is a further messenger, from mystery to our consciousness. I turn to Matthew Fox to summarise this section for us and to once more assert the link between personal pleasure and the needs of others — that is, the political dimension of desire:

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