How Conscious Is My Participation?

After hearing Jihan Abdullah's lesson on lenses this past Sunday, I keep returning to one question: How conscious is my participation?

We often move through life on autopilot. The same routines, the same faces, the same assumptions—so familiar we no longer notice them. There's nothing wrong with that—until we forget that we're seeing the world through a lens we rarely stop to examine.

Jihan offered a simple practice: Notice the lens. Notice the judgments that leap to mind unbidden. Notice the stories you tell yourself about people and situations. Notice how quickly you decide what an experience means before you've really taken it in.

The goal isn't to get rid of the lens. We all have them. Our experiences, beliefs, education, culture, and personal history shape how we see the world. The invitation is simply to become aware that the lens is there.

Then comes the next step: Question the lens. Is my interpretation the only possibility? What might I be missing? Could there be more happening here than I understand?

The moment we become curious about our assumptions, our perception begins to shift. We stop reacting from habit and start participating more consciously. We discover a deeper truth: life is always larger than the stories we tell about it. There is more complexity, more humanity, and more possibility than our first impressions can fathom.

Perhaps this is what Jesus was pointing to when he spoke of removing the log from our own eye before focusing on the speck in another's. Conscious participation begins by noticing the lens through which we see, questioning the stories we've accepted as truth, and becoming willing to look again. As the log is cleared away, our vision widens, and we catch a glimpse of a reality far larger than our assumptions—a reality filled with infinite possibility.