Monday, December 28: Universal Kaleidoscope: Seeing someone clearly
By Garin Samuelsen
Last night our dialogue led us into the question of what it means to truly see someone. Are our thoughts the only reality? Can we control our thoughts? Can we ever be unbiased? How does fear impact our seeing? All these questions led me into writing this post. So come flow with me and lets discover together were this goes. Respond after you finish and keep the dialogue going and bring any insights that you have. Here we go………..
From my perspective…….The Universe, is a grand kaleidoscope. When open, present, quiet, one is and conditioned knowledge is not. Here I see, and the universe is me. A paradox. Forms rise and fall in the kaleidoscopic wonder, yet, completely present, truth is and time like mist burns away in the fire of awareness. All is, timeless, immeasurable, beyond conception or verbal description.
Yet, stuck in our conditioning, the very structures of the Universe is distorted and unclear. It is then seen through the already distorted vision of our thoughts. Rather than seeing what is, we are putting our own past experiences and conditioning onto the present vision. The irony is that we think we are seeing when in fact, we are blinded by our ignorance. Ignorance means to ignore. we are ignoring what is right in front of us by bringing into the vision our past knowledge.
We can hold onto beliefs and opinions about the flow of energy and completely misunderstand what it is we are experiencing. We can become stuck in thinking that something has permanence or more value based on how we have come to structure our selves through how we have been taught. Instead of listening with our senses, and even beyond our senses, we become stuck in seeing out of the conditioned knowledge of our past accumulation. In this place, forms become stuck in the mirror of our minds. Instead of being able to see the wonder of all aspects of the Universe in which we are included, participating in the grand kaleidoscopic flow of all that is, we focus in myopically and separate out one from another and hence create an artificial division where none had existed. In being stuck in my cultural identification, violence now blooms whether its of family, religion, state, or against nature.
“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it”
How often do we take time to truly see someone? How often do we take time to see another creature, one that appears very different from oneself such as an insect, tree or fungi. What does it mean to see someone? Can we be free of our biases?
If we try and react with our thoughts we are not free. We are enslaved by the conditioning that has programmed us. If we never question our very structure of thinking, then all the issues we see, racism, sexism, war, domestic violence, poverty, class hierarchy, and environmental degradation shall continue - for all of these stem from the way we think and thereby see the world. All these issues are connected. We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world through the collective lens of our cultural mythology. This mythos teaches us that we are separate, that the wild is meant to be controlled and manipulated, that power structures are normal, that we can buy and own anything and that authority reigns. All of these beliefs teach us that in order to be successful, we must destroy the world. This is seeing the world in distortion. This is when the kaleidoscopic Universe is lost from us, and we see in a stuck fixed way rather than in wonder.
“A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without effort on your part......The mind covers up reality, without knowing it. To know the nature of the mind, you need intelligence, the capacity to look at the mind in silent and dispassionate awareness.....Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light.”
But, what would happen if we could stop and listen without the distortion of thought? What if we began to stop rushing, and let our thoughts die down, and really listen in? Awareness is here, ready to rush outward, waiting in the quiet mind. To see one another, to see another creature, to see an eco-system, to see the oneness of what is, then just be, stop rushing, and stop trying to be somebody. Here, trust, let go and let your light of awareness flood into all that is and discover in that wonder - true seeing…
