Perspectives on perspective - a meandering...

My father had a saying on a small plaque over
 his desk that said:

"Don't judge another man till you've walked a mile in
his shoes."

I Googled it to see if I could find the quote, and it came
up with several variations.

I liked this one:

"You can't really understand another person's experience
until you've walked a mile in their shoes."

Cherokee Indian saying

~

Then it gave someone's interpretation on the meaning:

"to experience life as someone else lives it and see the
world from their perspective, instead of trying to
change their perspective; it's known as empathy and
compassion..."

author unknown

~

And then there was this one...

You never really know someone until you understand 
their point of view, until you climb around in their skin
and walk around in it.

Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird

~

How often in the "spiritual culture" do the spiritual elite
try to convince you that their perspective is the "right"
perspective, the non-dual, spiritual perspective,
under the guise of "Truth."

But maybe we all just "see" the "Truth" differently,
through different "windows", through different
 lenses of perception...
It's all a play of perspectives...

Namaste 

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Different Perspectives out the same window

 

Perspective, Perception & Interpretation - Ted Chiang

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous 
grammar.  Every physical event was an utterance that could be
parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other
teleological, both valid, neither one disqualified no matter how
much context was available.

It's like the famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an
elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or
a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on  her chest.  There is
no "correct" interpretation; both are equally valid.

But you can't see them both at the same time.

Ted Chiang
Stories of Your Life and Others

with thanks to Whiskey River

for photo too :)

~

We each have unique stories, perspectives, perceptions,
 and frameworks of interpretation of Reality.
 I celebrate our diversity - our unique waves/expressions on
the Greater Ocean of Being...

MM

 

A Sliver of Reality - Kim Manly Ort

Our experiences and consequently our perceptions, gives us
a limited view of the world, a sliver of reality, if you will.
It's a valid sliver, but only a sliver.  Thought of in this way,
It's a wonder any of us can find similarities of experience
and understanding with others...

I'm all about seeing clearly, but each of us sees clearly differently,
depending on our identity (selected experience) and worldview.
For the past couple of years, I've been noticing what others
choose to believe and asking why.  I'm not exactly sure what to do
with some of the differences I have have difficulty understanding
or even how to talk to someone with a completely different
worldview.  I certainly have my own way of seeing and I find
some worldviews mind-boggling.  However, it's always a good
idea to question your own sliver of reality.

The Role of "Chance"

The musician and composer, John Cage, thought of "chance" as
something that happened to us, but also as something you could
invite into your life.  Why would you do that?  Because, if you
operate according to your own will or our story of how things are
or should be, you eliminate possibilities.

Cage invited "chance" into his life and [art].  The idea was to give
his will, his wants, his desired outcome a break and let "chance"
make a decision.  By using what he called "chance operations", he
could destroy his narrative, his particular point of view.  It's not that
his point of view wasn't worthy, just that it was limited and there
were a multiplicity of points of view he many not have considered.
It's a mindset where he let things be as they are without imposing
his own judgments on them.

Life is a dance with "chance"; always uncertain, often out of our
control, and this is scary.  We can embrace it, as John Cage did.
Whenever we feel our ego or rigid story is in charge, or we're
resisting reality and forming judgments, it's time to get curious
and ask questions like: "How else can I look at this?" or "What
other choice could I make?"  Why not let things be, invite "chance"
in, and explore the many possibilities that arise.

Kim Manly Ort
Writer, Photographer, Workshop Facilitator

~

"Life is like a box of chocolates,
you never know what you're going to get."

Forrest Gump

~

Personal Note:  What John Cage and Kim refer to as "Chance" I call
"The Mystery."  Some call it "Spirit", or even Intuition; tapping
into something greater than my self for Inspiration...  My husband
sees each day as a new life experience that offers a portal to Eternity,
if we let it, even the mundane, like mowing the lawn.  Sometimes he
will randomly choose from a list of possibilities for the day, or do
what he feels drawn to do that day.  Is that "chance" or opening to
the Field of "The Mystery" - or his own Intuition?  He says:
Intuition is the mainline to "The Universe."  It's how "The Universe"
communicates.  It's the flow of awareness that comes from
"The  Universe."

~

John Cage (1912-1992) was an American composer, music theorist,
writer, philosopher, and artist.  Cage studied Indian philosophy and
Zen Buddhism in the late 1940's, and the I Ching was a source of
reference for him, using it as a "random chance generator", as well
as a philosophical reference.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Moon and reflection in skylight 
a portal to eternity? :)

 

What's Your Bias? - Brian McLaren

People can't see what they can't see.
Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall,
trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.
No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,
unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias...

Confirmation Bias:  We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities.  As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn't fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer s simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It's almost impossible to see what our community doesn't, can't or won't see.

Complementary Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I'll be hostile to yours.  If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I'll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don't know how much (or little) we know because we don't know how much (or little) others know.  In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are.  As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can't be seen from where I am right now.  But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias:  I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false.  I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don't notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don't have intense and sustained personal contact with "the other", my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It's hard to see something when my way of making a living require me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

Brian McLaren
from - Why Don't They Get It?  Overcoming Bias in Others.

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The Swan and The Frog - Dennis Holtje

Photo by Robert Woeger on Unsplash

There once was a beautiful white swan that came from the great
ocean to the North.  After being in the South for the winter, it
was ready for the return journey home.  So it took off and with
its big wing span and shining white feathers, it soared effortlessly
through the blue sky.  After a long while, and far along the journey,
the swan began to tire and came down to land for a rest.  It landed
right on the edge of a water well and let out a deep sigh.

In the bottom of this well there lived a frog.  The frog said, "Well,
who are you and where do you come from?"

"I am a swan, and my home is on the water of the great northern
ocean," answered the swan.

"Ocean?  How big is this ocean? asked the frog.

"Very big," said Swan.

"Is it this big?" Frog asked, taking two hops backward.

"No, much bigger," said Swan.

So the frog took five huge hops backward, saying,
"Is the ocean this big?"

Swan said, "No, it's much bigger than that."

And so the frog went around the entire well - his whole
reality, as he knew it - and asked the swan, "Now, is the ocean
as big as this?"  And the swan said, "No, it's much bigger,
much bigger!"

Thereupon the frog said, "Well, you're a fool and a liar!"
because he knew there could be nothing bigger than
 his world and his well.

Dennis Holtje
From: Light to Sound

 

 

An Inner Whisper - John O'Donohue

Human identity is complex.  Nothing is ever given simply
or immediately.  Even the simplest act of perception has
many layers... Time and memory often reveal things later
that were staring us in the eye, but we never noticed them.
The quest for the truth of things is never ending.  Every
experience is open to countless readings and interpretations.
We never see a thing completely.  In sure anticipation, our
eyes have always already altered what awaits our gaze.
The search for truth is difficult and uncomfortable.  Because
the mystery is too much for us, we may opt to settle for
the surface of things.  Comfort becomes more important than
true presence.  This is precisely why we need to hear the
discerning voice.

Somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice.  This
voice distrusts the status quo.  It sounds out the falsity in
things and encourages the dissent from the images things
tend to assume.  It underlines the secret crevices where the
surface has become strained.  It advises distance and opens
up a new perspective through which the concealed meaning
 of a situation might emerge... Its intention is to keep the heart
clean and clear.  This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or
known to others outside...  Yet much depends on that small
voice.  The truth of its whisper marks the line between honor
and egoism, kindness and chaos.  In extreme situations,
which have been emptied of all shelter and tenderness,
that small voice whispers from somewhere beyond and
encourages the heart to hold out for dignity, respect, beauty
and love.  That whisper brings forgotten nobility into an arena
where violence has traduced everything.  This faithful voice
can illuminate the dark lands of despair.  It becomes both the
sign and presence of a transcendence that no force or horror
can extinguish.  Each day in the world, in the prisons, hospitals
and killing fields, against all the odds, this still, small voice
continues to echo the beauty of the human being.  In haunted
places this voice carries the light of beauty like a magical
lantern to transform the desolation, to remind us that
regardless of what may be wrenched from us, there is a
dignity and hope that we do not have to lose.  This voice
brings us directly into contact with the inalienable presence
of beauty in the soul.

John O'Donohue

~

Photo from the Internet

Perceptions of The Universe - Selected Quotes

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.
Some part of our being knows this is where we came from.
We long to return, and we can because the cosmos is
also within us.

We are made of star stuff.

Carl Sagan
Cosmos

~

photo - Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

What are we?

A fleeting, intricate presence riding a tiny speck of water
and rock, out here in the dark, sailing the ship of wonder
ever more deeply into the void from which we came...

Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal
from: The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained

~

When dew falls as tears from the morning sky,
When riverside trees sparkle in sunlight,
So close in my heart their shadows fall,
Then I know
That the Universe is a floating lotus
In the holy lake of my mind.
Then I know:

I am the voice within the Voice,
The song within the Song,
The life within the Life,
The light breaking through the heart of darkness.

Rabindranath Tagore
from - "A Flight of Swans"
translated by Aurobindo Bose

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

... thus you came into being
from non-existence...

...like a star without a name...

Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights...

Rumi

~

How we perceive affects what we believe,
what we believe affects what our perception is...

MM

Namaste

_/\_

Changing Perceptions of Reality - Ivan Granger

One must remain in the Vastness,
alert and lucid,
Letting one's gaze encompass
the infinite sky,
As though seated on the summit
of a mountain,
open to all the horizons.

by Shabkar
from - Tibetan Poems of Shabkar,
Translated by Matthieu Ricard

I am acutely aware of the anxiety felt by everyone -
concerns about Covid-19, uncertainty about jobs and
the economy in general, the increasingly messy political
situation, all surrounded by pressures of isolation.  Whatever
worries you may be feeling are being shared by many.  Even
in uncertainty and isolation, there is connection and community
and, therefore, strength.

...everything is an opportunity for awareness.  Even in moments
of fear, we [can] always be asking ourselves, what can I learn
from this?  How can I use this moment as a way to step free from
limited ways of thinking...?

One observation that comes to mind is that when society is moving
along in expected ways we are much more likely to align with
the group mind.  The group mind asserts that reality is a certain way
and the routine functioning of day-to-day life seems to confirm it, so
we enter into the shared psychic current - for good and for bad.  We
can list many of the ways that are good, but it also lulls us into a
rather narrow band of perception and self-awareness.  When those

outer certainties, which were never certainties in the first place,
change, when the rhythms of the human world shift and become
less predictable, the fear we feel is more fundamental than the
question of a paycheck or health concerns;  it is a fear that
reality is falling apart.  It is worth reminding ourselves that
Reality [the Vastness] itself is never vulnerable and the only

thing that changes is our agreed upon description of it [our
tribal mentality].  We are being coaxed to see reality in a new
way, to see different aspects of reality, to see a wider view of
reality...

The challenge is to quickly adapt our awareness to the new
terrain, to recognize its regular features, to find what is familiar
and identify what is new, to be at home in a more opens space.

...the less rigidly we hold to some idea of how things used to
be or "should" be and, instead, allow our minds to acclimate to
what is happening, the more naturally and confidently we can
step forward.

As conscious beings we always want to perceive as clearly as
we can.  We want to perceive as much of reality as we can.  And
we must remind ourselves that what we call reality is just a
mental model of what actually is.  When that mental model is
shaken, we can try to prop it up exactly as it was before, but more
rickety and at a tenuous angle, or we adjust it.....to reflect a new
understanding.

 We have a chance to review our assumptions and assess which
 ones don't stand up to the scrutiny of stress.  We are invited
to embrace possibilities that had previously been rejected. 
We can use this time for redefinition and improved perception.

Moments of uncertainty are a genuine opportunity to update
our descriptions of reality, both personally and collectively,
in order to more fully reflect the immensely mysterious space
of being we inhabit together.

The big challenge is not to shut our eyes as our vision expands.

Ivan Granger
Poetry Chaikhana

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Why We Hate" - Steven Spielberg

There is a very interesting 6 episode series that we recently
watched on The Discovery Channel called
"Why We Hate", explaining the human capacity for hate. The
series titles are: Its Origins, Tribalism, Tools and Tactics,
Extremism, Crimes Against Humanity, and Hope.  Maybe
some of you have seen it as well...  It was produced by
Steven Spielberg and Alex Gibney of The Discovery Channel.

It is a provocative documentation of human's hatred toward
one another.  Episode 6 includes discussions with a neuro-
scientist, Emile Bruneau, that proved to be an eye-opener
for me, and brought some self-awareness.  He related it to
the brain and certain neural pathways, calling it
"biological hate" and how we can, in a sense, retrain the
brain through meditation! [which doesn't require that you
belong to a particular religion].  That despite our conditioning,
our environment, our *learned* prejudices, our isms, our "tribe"
[which would include our "religious" tribes, not just our race
and ethnicity] we can *unlearn* our innate, conditioned
capacity for hate for those we *perceive* to be different from
"us." The Us vs them mentality.

If you are on Comcast/Xfinity you can watch it On Demand.
You can also watch it on Amazon Prime, which requires
membership, although you can evidently pay to watch individual
episodes.  In which case watch episodes 5 & 6 and you'll get
the most important parts.  The first episodes are good, but a
little slow.  On the computer you can go to
Discovery.com/shows/why-we-hate and you can view episodes
there on "DiscoveryGo."  We were able to watch the Trailer
for free...

It's worth the watch!

Here's the link to the Trailer with Steven Spielberg
on "DiscoveryGo"

Through Time...

My life is but a passage through time;
a zephyr ~~~~

smoke and mirrors that seem real;
a role to play, a story to unwind...

Sometimes burdened by the density of matter reality,
with its never ending mentations, and entanglements
of the personality;

baggage carried from the past;
paradoxes of the present;
perceptions of "Reality" that don't quite fit
the keyhole - waiting to be unlocked.

At times the mysteries of the Cosmos call me to
ethereal flights, and I play in the
 cosmic dance of timelessness...
Free of the passage of time.
Free of the persona, the story line,
that carries me through time...

Mystic Meandering
August 23, 2019
3am

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Enlightening Perspective :)

My husband found this pic on Facebook and I just had to repost it here :)

Definition of Down Syndrome:

"The innate ability to see the good and beauty in the world,
to radiate joy and happiness, and to offer a unique perspective
on life with the ability to change other's perceptions."

Sweet...

This touched my heart deeply and reminded me that an
enlightened perspective doesn't depend on how intellectually
brilliant we are, or how much we understand with our minds,
it's all about how we see with our Heart;
staying innocent and open to life...

We are lit from within with a beautiful, loving, kind,
compassionate, trusting Spirit.
If only we could truly Experience it, Express it,
Be it...

Just Trust, Just Love, Just Be...

Inside the Fairy Tale - Matt Licata

It's not so much that we need (or even can) get out of the matrix,
the developmental-cultural-historical lens through which we have
come to perceive what we call "reality."

Instead, begin to see it clearly, in all its nuance, subtlety, and
dream-like luminosity.  How am I imagining myself, others, and
the world?  What is the myth in which I am living, through which
I am seeing?  What is the story I'm telling, who are the gods and
goddesses I am traveling with?

Am I willing to take the risk to dream a new dream?  To differentiate
from the voices I have inherited from a world that has forgotten the
mysteries.  To listen to the new poetry as it pours out of the stars.

While we may never be able to fully step outside the matrix and
 report back as a neutral observer and "detached witness"
(another fantasy of modern consciousness), we can play within it,
dance inside and around it, allow ourselves the freedom to
 hide and seek, and the imagination to get lost and to be found.

We can get messy, fall apart, be vulnerable, fail well, fail with heart,
forget and remember, dissolve and come back together. And set aside
the fantasy that one day we'll come to some safe, secure, knowing
resolution to the wildness of love and its contradictory, untamed,
and relentless activity.  That one day we'll become a "master" at life,
wiggle into some invulnerable/untouchable state, tucked away and
protected from the reality that the rug can and will be pulled out
from underneath us in each unfolding moment.

To fully participate in the dream without falling into trance. And
even if we fall into trance, to dare to see it, too, as none other
than "the Beloved" in disguise.

It's really like being a character in our own fairy tale, with all the
mythical and archetypal beings by our side, curious as to what the
crazy love-struck boy or girl is going to do next, in awe of the
human form and the inseparability of matter and spirit.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - via No Mind's Land

You May Dream Dreams

Our Concept of "Reality" - Bohm, LeShan & Brunton

Reality is what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is what we believe.
What we believe is based upon our perceptions.
What we perceive depends upon what we look for.
What we look for depends upon what we think.
What we think depends upon what we perceive.
What we perceive determines what we believe.
What we believe determines what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is our reality.

David Bohm
Quantum Physicist

~

The trouble is we have a basic commitment to the *idea*
that there is one true, valid concept of reality
(ours, of course) and that all others are primitive,
childlike, mythological or pathological.
[or false].

Lawrence LeShan
Psychologist
From: Landscapes of the Mind:
The Faces of Reality

~

There is no single path to enlightenment.
Life itself is the great enlightener.
Do not submit to the pressure of those who say
there is only a single way.....the way they follow
or teach.  Do not let the mind be trammelled or
narrowed.  The truth is that the ways are many,
are spread out in all directions, and are individual.

Paul Brunton
Mystical Philosopher

Authentic Being - Clare Blanchflower

Make no mistake
There is no goal
There is no path
Your quest ends
Here
In the
absolute
authentic
allowing of
this moment's
raw expression

In the deepest surrender
to what is
the lens of
limited focus
softens into
unbounded emptiness
Revealing
the infinity of you

If you truly desire

to know
your Self
Awaken to
Honesty
Let go of everything
that keeps you from
authentic
Being

Allow the awakeness
of the moment
to meet your
wholehearted
openness

Give up all roles
Surrender all masks
Melt
Into the radiant gaze
of wholeness

Clare Blanchflower

Buffers of Perception - Mark Nepo

Through our self-will and self-control,
we have buffered ourselves from the mysterious
dimensions of spirit...

When we assume that we author everything we experience
we snuff the possibility of being touched by the more
numinous dimensions of reality...

Our constant insistence that we are self-creators
of our own destiny,
the builders of our own circumstances,
can create a spiritual cataract that blocks us
from being touched by the mystical light of spirit
that so often surrounds us - from
honoring how the Divine speaks directly
through the things of this world...

Somehow we fear such direct contact with grace...

A continual and deep risk for us,
if we are to feel the presence
and friendship of all that is,
is to humbly lift the veils we drape ourselves in,
the veils that insulate us as the self-creators
of everything we experience.

Whether we accept it or not,
we are asked to let life,
in all its unseeable elements,
touch us -
letting the indwelling spirit
pass through us...

We can become dangerously small
and insular if we limit truth to just
what our small lives have encountered.
Compassion allows us to embrace
the underlying truth that all experiences
thread together to form the
living Universe...

Mark Nepo
From - The Exquisite Risk:
Daring to Live an Authentic Life

(Mark's words, my format)

An Expotition...

Pooh Bear and I went on an Expotition in the surrounding neighborhood last Thursday – our version of the 100 Acre Wood.  At my suggestion we went down a side street we had never been down before.  I was sure that there was a path that cut across a “power line right of way” back to our street, as I had seen the other end of the path from our street several times.  We kept walking down a long hill, following the curves in what seemed like a much longer way than the length of our own street just a block away.  We eventually found the path that cut through (yellow dotted line on map below), but it seemed to be a part of someone’s property that had a gate that was closed.  Neither one of us being the risk-taker type, Pooh and I decided to just keep going –  even though we had no idea where it would take us.

It was getting dark. Dogs were barking at us - strangers in this neck of the woods.  And we kept running into dead ends and cul-de-sacs.  We could see where we needed to be, but we couldn’t get there from where we were.  There was no path, no way through.  So we kept going and going and going, like an Expotition to nowhere.  Eventually we sighted a familiar main road.  We walked along the shoulder in rush hour traffic after dark – until we got to a large open field that we knew was just down the street from our house.  Once again I had seen that there was a path from our side of the field – that *appeared* to cut across the field.  But now that we were on the other side of the field we couldn’t find the path…  Okay, so this is becoming a theme here, don’t you think!

By this time I’m running on empty, stepping in gopher holes, and Pooh Bear is way ahead trying to find the way in the dark with only the remnants of light from the sunset.  We came to a deep ravine right in the middle of the field that spanned the entire width of the field.  There was no way across.  Ooops.  Very strange, I could have sworn I saw a path that went all the way the length of the field out to the main street.  I had not seen a deep ravine.  So we followed along the edge at the top of the ravine, hoping to find its end so we could get around it.  But the gaping hole didn’t end, until we got to a parking lot at the edge of the field.  We had to go through the parking lot and re-enter the field on the other side of the ravine where we *finally* found a way that would lead us home, which was not necessarily "the path" that we *thought* would take us there.  Phew.  Now *that* was an expotition.  It was probably about 2 miles, and about an hour’s brisk walk.

Upon reflection I found the whole journey an interesting life metaphor that we kept running into dead ends and cul-de-sacs, unable to get where we needed to go; not really knowing where we were going, unable to find a path that would take us home.  Everyday life reflecting an internal perception of “reality…”

 Just two days before I had awoken with the sense of needing to “leave the spiritual path behind” (also a recurring theme), although it was not clear to me what that meant exactly, and still isn’t, but change is in the air - again. J  It is the sense of “endings,” the sense of giving up the *trying*, the*striving* to find the right way, to stop *pursuing* the path; to just stop - to just *live* and not always try to *get* somewhere.  Pooh Bear has even commented that he felt I was trying too hard to find my way, efforting. And when I asked him why I was not getting the clarity and insight that seem to come to him so easily, he said – “because I’m not *trying*.”  Oooo – wise bear.  They just come to him because he stays open to life, without agenda, without the expectation of finding anything.  But as a consequence of my *trying* so hard to find the right path, the path has become illusive, and almost emotionally torturous to travel.  So I was not totally surprised when our little expotition ended up feeling a lot like my “spiritual path.”

 Recently I mentioned to a fellow blogger that I felt like I have been running on a “spiritual treadmill” going nowhere; still running on the surface of life.  That even after 30 years of being on a “spiritual path” I was still living on the surface of life, aware of a deeper Reality – a vast spacious background Presence in which all of life exists – but still focused mainly on the surface; lamenting that even “spirituality,” like religion, had become just another construct in the matrix. 

So it seems it’s time to get off the treadmill and leave the surface path behind, head deeper Into The Forest and Plumbthe Depths, tasting the sweet honey in the adventure of Being, and experience the current of Being that runs deeply through the internal pathways.

“Why search for anything when the very fabric of experience is
the path,
the unfolding of everyday experience.

Stop trying to awaken,
stop meddling with your experience
long enough to notice what is.

The key is within.”

Rob Matthews
”The Ineffable Mystery of Being”
(scroll down to read full article)

Seeing Red... It's not what you think!

Seeing color was an exercise from The Practice of Contemplative Photography by Andy Karr and Michael Wood.  See their website here.  The idea was to only see color, not to identify the object of the color – as in red *car*, yellow *sign*, blue *house* - but to just see the color – any color – all colors.

~~~

This photo was taken last Fall
outside a restaurant.

 ~~~

~~~

I was out in the car doing errands one day this last week and thought I’d try the exercise.  No camera to tempt me to snap every shot of color I saw…  I just had to be aware…   I began to see red – naturally drawn to it… Interesting…  I just became naturally *aware* of the color red as it passed by me or in front of me, and wondered if this is what the authors meant: The object itself  is not important – don’t need to identify it – only see color…

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And then – a couple of days later I began to see red all around the house. (We have red trim, red car, red fence, red doors, red curtains – all shades and hues of red. J)  Only this time the camera was readily available and I began snapping like a snappin’ fool.  After all, it was an *assignment* and my mind evidently took it seriously. Intuitive seeing left the room and thinking took over.  I became obsessed with red, on an expedition to find red, planning, and arranging – oh-oh…  I broke one of the rules of contemplative photography – no contrivance – if I understand them right.  According to the authors – contrivance is “how we want things to appear and not how things actually are - directly *seeing* your immediate experience unfabricated and uncontrived.”  I started to specifically *look* for anything red, looking for “good” shots – not just spontaneous “flashes of perception/seeing” as they call it in the book – but purposely *looking.*  And I could tell the difference.  There wasn’t a *natural* relaxed, spontaneous *feeling* of perception that flowed from within.  I wasn’t just being *aware* - but conceptual thought took over the process.  I didn’t get absorbed in the moment of awareness, just noticing, instead, my mind became the controller of the moment. I felt stressed and anxious about “getting the shot.”  I think you can see the difference in the two photos at the end of this post with the previous photos.  

The authors say that “true seeing comes through seeing from your basic nature/Beingness which gets ‘reflected’– producing ‘equivalents’ of what you saw from your basic Being, drawing on a deeper level of intelligence than the usual way of seeing..... through being present to something in an open space (of awareness) that is created by letting go of the currents of mental activity that obscure our natural insight and awareness.”  One could call it the awakened eye, just *seeing* life as you find it, rather than manipulating it…   Am not saying I’m there yet… Just sayin’ what they said…

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contrived

So – obviously - I am learning to *see* without the conceptual overlay, without manipulation, without interpretation, judgment, or contrivance – just seeing what is - from that sense of Aware Beingness – that which is seeing through the mask of me.  Not as easy as I *thought.* J

“In reality only the Ultimate is…
The rest is a matter of name and form.
When you understand that names and shapes
are hollow shells without content,
and what is real is nameless and formless,
just pure energy of the life and light
of Consciousness,
you will be at peace -
immersed in the deep Silence of reality…”

Nisargadatta

Life Blossoms for Its Own Pleasure...

We are in full Fall foliage here, and this year is turning out to be pretty spectacular. For the last couple of weeks, as I have traveled back and forth to my mother’s house (a 30 min drive), bogged down in the practical of life, I have watched the leaves turn into their brilliant radiance, peak, and fall. And of course didn’t have my camera with me – or the time to stop and enjoy. So today, grabbing some time for myself, I went out on a short excursion, just a few miles from where we live, to “Fiddler’s Circle.”

I walked the circle and managed to capture some of the beautiful color and scenery; although I lost the bright sunlight almost immediately with cloud cover. But still, Life had blossomed for Its pure pleasure and I wanted to be in it; a Colorado Fall in one of our most spectacular years ever!

Leaves were raining as the winds picked up, making their rustling noise as they fell. The smell of Fall in the air was fragrantly ripe. Unfortunately the photos of mountains didn’t come out too sharply, partly because of my little Kodak camera, and partly because of the light conditions. I find that true of myself as well. Because of the lens of thoughts, feelings, frame of mind, and perspectives that I see life through, and my own “light conditions,” I sometimes can’t see clearly the brilliant radiance of Life that is everywhere - just being - for Its own pleasure – and ours too… :)

Enjoy the View!

Everything comes full circle…
Nothing really dies…
Life, the Light, is always within…
It only changes form,
changes expression.
Nothing can kill IT.
IT rekindles ItSelf
from formless to form,
and back again…

~

“The form of the formless.
The image of the imageless.
It is called indefinable
and beyond imagination.
Stand before it and there is no beginning.
Follow it and there is no end.
Stay with the ancient Tao.
Move with the present.
Knowing the ancient beginning is
the essence of Tao.”

Lao Tzu

~

“Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Don’t claim them.
Feel the artistry moving through.”

Rumi

~

Everything calls you back to the Truth…