Fresh
"Looking for the extraordinary, we miss the (much more extraordinary) ordinary world." (Joan Tollifson, Bare-bones Meditation)
I was remembering last night something I once read about how anything we perceive is really just our mind expressing itself as that thing. Not our small, rather peevish minds, but our Big Mind (otherwise known as the universe).
For example, the chair you're sitting on right now is not just a chair, a separate thing that exists independently of you. It is that, of course--that's our usual perception--but it can also be seen as something more vital and dynamic, something intricately connected with you. Just as you are the universe expressing itself as you, a chair is the universe expressing itself as a chair. Both you and the chair are simply the universe expressing itself in different ways.
This point of view is nothing new to me, not intellectually anyway, but last night I actually experienced things from that perspective for awhile. Suddenly common objects in my apartment took on a new and unexpected fascination: Ah, a lampshade! Look! This glass door knob, the smooth feel of it! I couldn't sleep for a long time because I wanted to explore every last object in my bedroom. It was as if I were seeing it all for the first time.
I think this is how infants must perceive the world: everything is a source of fascination because it is all fresh, spontaneously arising out of each moment. As grownups, we tend to see things as stable entities, existing in the past, and thus we take them for granted. We see the same desk day after day and soon we don't notice the desk at all.
But it is not the same desk day after day. It is your mind expressing itself as a desk in the very instant that you perceive it. In that moment, both you and the desk arise together from some boundless void where all things exist only in potential.
It isn't as though you can separate the desk from your perception of it. There may or may not be a desk out there in some possible objective universe: we'll never know. All we can know is the desk that we perceive, and that desk is our mind itself. It doesn't exist "in" our minds, because there is no separate entity "mind" and "desk." There is just the mind-as-desk, the mind-as-you.
Ultimately, there is neither you nor desk but just mind, and it flowers as "seeing" or "touching" or "perceiving." Have you noticed that when you fall in love, deeply in love with someone, the experience is so immense that (at times) there ceases to be a "you" independent of a "beloved" but just this ??? -- moving, humming experience of "loving?"
That same perspective is available to us in everyday matters. It's easy to appreciate it with powerful and intense emotions, but it resides just as much in the ordinary experience of our day to day lives. It's just a matter of attending to it.
When we are eating lunch, there is just eating. When we are sitting at our desk, there is just sitting.
Outside, it is raining. In here, it is writing. Soon it will be sleeping.
I was remembering last night something I once read about how anything we perceive is really just our mind expressing itself as that thing. Not our small, rather peevish minds, but our Big Mind (otherwise known as the universe).
For example, the chair you're sitting on right now is not just a chair, a separate thing that exists independently of you. It is that, of course--that's our usual perception--but it can also be seen as something more vital and dynamic, something intricately connected with you. Just as you are the universe expressing itself as you, a chair is the universe expressing itself as a chair. Both you and the chair are simply the universe expressing itself in different ways.
This point of view is nothing new to me, not intellectually anyway, but last night I actually experienced things from that perspective for awhile. Suddenly common objects in my apartment took on a new and unexpected fascination: Ah, a lampshade! Look! This glass door knob, the smooth feel of it! I couldn't sleep for a long time because I wanted to explore every last object in my bedroom. It was as if I were seeing it all for the first time.
I think this is how infants must perceive the world: everything is a source of fascination because it is all fresh, spontaneously arising out of each moment. As grownups, we tend to see things as stable entities, existing in the past, and thus we take them for granted. We see the same desk day after day and soon we don't notice the desk at all.
But it is not the same desk day after day. It is your mind expressing itself as a desk in the very instant that you perceive it. In that moment, both you and the desk arise together from some boundless void where all things exist only in potential.
It isn't as though you can separate the desk from your perception of it. There may or may not be a desk out there in some possible objective universe: we'll never know. All we can know is the desk that we perceive, and that desk is our mind itself. It doesn't exist "in" our minds, because there is no separate entity "mind" and "desk." There is just the mind-as-desk, the mind-as-you.
Ultimately, there is neither you nor desk but just mind, and it flowers as "seeing" or "touching" or "perceiving." Have you noticed that when you fall in love, deeply in love with someone, the experience is so immense that (at times) there ceases to be a "you" independent of a "beloved" but just this ??? -- moving, humming experience of "loving?"
That same perspective is available to us in everyday matters. It's easy to appreciate it with powerful and intense emotions, but it resides just as much in the ordinary experience of our day to day lives. It's just a matter of attending to it.
When we are eating lunch, there is just eating. When we are sitting at our desk, there is just sitting.
Outside, it is raining. In here, it is writing. Soon it will be sleeping.
posted by dan at 12:00 AM
1 comments
