Perception isn’t proof of reality. What you see doesn’t tell you what the world is; it shows you what kind of lens you’re looking through. It is an artifact of conditioning, a relic from the past projected outward and mistaken for truth. Whatever you’re experiencing, whatever gives you the most distress in your life—know this: You are a lens, an imaginative limit.
“Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I have given everything I see…all the meaning it has for me.” ~ A Course in Miracles
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“We were talking—about the space between us all And the people—who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion Never glimpse the truth—then it’s far too late—when they pass away.” George Harrison
“As within, so without, as above, so below, as the universe, so the soul” Hermes Trismegistus
It’s all mind, all the time, creating perception; engendering feeling and action. When I close my eyes, there is seeing–right here. When I dream, there is seeing–right here. Ask the question, “Is there anything outside?” How it gets projected “out there,” I don’t know.
I remember having the amazing realization that love cannot be found because there is no separate place from which to look; nowhere it is not. No within/without; no above/below; no subject/object.
What am I looking at?
And maybe I’m just totally FoS. 🙂 My apologies for the lofty language. It’s just apparently so. Or not.
Where does your attention go? Outthere to see the occasional happy rainbow of experience, surrounded by the possibility of grey and darkness?
Turn around and let the Source, or presence, turn the lens into a prism, coloring everything in experience. To let the light in, you have to pay attention to it. Light glows brightly when you attend to it.
A diagram is helpful, but it’s not enough. Like an inhabitant of Plato’s Cave, turn towards the light rather than reacting to shadows on the wall. Is your perception true? Is it a world imprisoned by and through a glass darkly; a world of shadows? Or is it shot through a prism, a colorful refraction of the light within; darkness dispelled? You cannot serve two masters. Pay attention to the light, the Source of illumination. Check it out, over and over, like a lover.
Pay attention to the lens (yellow line) through which you perceive/limit life. It makes the difference between what you think is happening and who you think you are. You are the white blank zone creating a world of colors and feelings. The light is within. Suffering is inevitable on the experience side. Decide accordingly.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference“. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
What is outside cannot be known, only projected and interpreted. “Be still and know that I am,” is a pointer to what is behind consciousness, the experiencing capacity. Experience is the dream; the dream is experiencing. Identity erroneously comes from experiencing perceptually from the POV of a seer, experiencer. Behind experience is the true identity.
There is an underestimated reason why meditation is helpful. It is a break from perception, from engagement with the world as subject/object. Perception, as it stands, cannot be anything but a separative perspective. In one sense, it is the basis of experience. Which is I guess, why we’re here, why we’re dreaming. On the other hand, it divides what is seen from the seer, necessarily. And therein lies the “problem.”
This is all rather dry and in some ways, the scientific rendition in that it is an attempt to explain, which is useless if not lived. You learn about gravity by learning to walk, not be having it explained or understanding the concept.
What is lived, emerges in childhood, is a sense of guilt, a loss of innocence. Because we are pretending to have separated from our source, and somehow become split off, individuated, and autonomous, like Pinocchio going off on his adventures. But there is a conviction, a knowing deep down, that we have fallen from grace. Yet it’s impossible.
Coming out of innocence, as a child begins the conditioning of separation, we start to think we are inherently bad. I am a bad girl, or a bad boy, is what is internalized. Not intentionally or maliciously, but in the inevitable sense of pretending to be something we are not. We didn’t really pull this separation thing off; we are only pretending. But the pretense has become so real that we are frightened, and feel guilty.
This is not what a child does, it is what Mind does. It goes out to explore and become and experience. That’s all there is. All mind; only mind. Yet somehow it gets lost in this adventure and believes it is truly here as this character, surrounded by other nefarious characters.
“There is something wrong; I need to do something,” is the alert that drives everything we do, in the dream. And it is true in that there definitely is something wrong. I am not this, and not here. I’m only sleeping. The only thing that needs to be done is to see this, and stop pretending, become unmesmerized by the dream. So this feeling of wrongness, of sin, and the hope for redemption looks like crazy cartoon characters, continuously and repetitively, trying to get something, to achieve something, to prove something, in the dream. But like Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, it is all in vain. And no one ever really gets hurt, or dies.
If you’d quit trying to fix yourself for one minute, you’d see this as false programming for a false sense of identity. The wrongness is not in you. It is in the game of pretending to be something you are not. Pinnochio is not a real boy, independent of his father’s carving a puppet from a lump of pine. The Coyote does not really want or need, or ever capture, the illusive Road Runner. It is all a fiction that can look pretty crazy and make you laugh when truly seen.
You are neither the Boss of Everything, or the Hapless victim. The world is not as it appears. Nor are you. Wake up!
When I wake up early in the morning Lift my head, I’m still yawning When I’m in the middle of a dream Stay in bed, float up stream (float up stream)
Please, don’t wake me, no, don’t shake me Leave me where I am, I’m only sleeping
Everybody seems to think I’m lazy I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy Running everywhere at such a speed ‘Til they find there’s no need (there’s no need)
Please, don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away And after all I’m only sleeping
Keeping an eye on the world going by my window Taking my time
Lying there and staring at the ceiling Waiting for a sleepy feeling
Please, don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away And after all I’m only sleeping
Nothing has substance. (Wave? Particle? Non-locality? Schrodinger’s cat and probability?)
Nothing has duration. (Time as a random series of images?)
So how can you, or anything else, be anything in particular? The mind strings an infinite number of images together, creating the appearance of being linear. Which image doesn’t fade? And thus fading, which would be true?
There is no attempt here to be mysterious, or hyperbolic, or even spiritual. Seriously. Both time and object permanence are learned. Does that make them true?
Please contact me here, if you’d like to discuss and/or consider the fallibility of perception/time/identity. Nothing is fixed. So who are you, and what is happening? Thank you.
The Deepest Peace 