I have spent many hours fussing over how I might adequately convey the scope of The Miller’s influence on my life. There are any number of metaphors that are useful and appropriate and that I could use and have used in other contexts. This moment brings the notion of ‘dimensionality’ – if that is a word. If it isn’t, let’s go with it anyway: we might understand the notion to be quality of having dimensions. I hope the following might clarify.
Imagine life – your life, any life, life itself as you understand it – as a vast tapestry: endless interwoven strands – different shapes, lines, colours, fabrics, textures: inclusions and designs of all kinds indicating ideas, relationships, courses of action, consequences – all of it hanging like a curtain, in a more-or-less flat or planar array, as a tapestry hangs. Imagine all the complexity and minute detail of a life fully lived captured in the gentle undulating folds of the fabric, all the feelings and emotions, the hopes, fears, the fond memories and the regrets, the contradictions and insights – imagine it all woven into this boundless extended surface as a record of life. Close your eyes for a moment and let a suitably rich picture form of the extraordinary complexity of your own life.
And now take this image of a vast tapestry and imagine it laid flat on the ground.
And now imagine this great picture of life extending downwards into the earth, endlessly, from each point on the tapestry, so that it forms a more deeply and richly three-dimensional object, growing downwards from the form of a quilt laid on the earth into a flat box, then a cube and then downwards more, forming a tall rectangular box, sinking, flowing down, downwards into the earth.
But wait ! The horizontal dimensions of our ground-laid tapestry continue to grow as well. Its volume increases in all three dimensions. And we soon begin to appreciate that another element arises in the process: we begin to appreciate that the surface of the earth is not planar, but is actually the surface of a great sphere, and appears flat only from the limited perspective of our everyday posture. And so as the tapestry grows outward along the ground in four directions, we begin to perceive a compound curvature in the form and as it grows and extends, the edges curve around and eventually meet forming a great sphere. Our little patch of tapestry has grown into the form of the earth itself and now continues to radiate outwards, endlessly, infinitely, and we begin to understand that we have seen our ‘selves’ in a limited way, that we are part of a greater reality; that time and space and OHIP and yes, even death and taxes are elements of an existence that is far vaster than we ever dreamed to imagine and yet within our grasp. We begin to appreciate that love has no limits; that the human is divine: that the divine is human; that incremental realization of these truths is readily within our grasp, within our breath, within our letting go of our now evolutionarily-outmoded concepts of the individual.
This begins to describe the influence of Ross Laing’s work: the love, the compassion, the respect for all that flourishes life, the commitment to the truth and its unambiguous statement, the therapeutic interventions, the aesthetic expressions, the deep playfulness, the modeling of inclusion, transparency, vulnerability — all this is what has been served by his vision, his practice and his colleagues.
Oh, I had a pretty intense and fascinating life before encountering Ross, to be sure. But as with this extended metaphor, it has been immeasurably deepened and broadened by living, loving contact with the embodiment of these additional dimensions.
Our mission then, as students and members is, with gratitude in our hearts, to grow our resolve to further this good work of which we have endless examples, for the general upliftment and improvement of all life.
Sheldon Rose
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