We are what we think.  And by and large, we are the thoughts of others.  We have absorbed the thoughts, patterns, habits, and manners of others; we are an accumulation of these processes, tokens, and methodologies that others provide.  Yet we (each of us) think that we are something truly independent and unique.  The reality may be that most of us are not unique or independent at all.   To be a second-hand copy (of what everyone else basically is) may not at all be what “true living” involves.  Being another domino in a sequential series of reactions may not involve real action whatsoever.  Real action goes beyond limited boundaries.  Limited boundaries constitute the very essence of symbolic representations and mental recognition frameworks via learned (i.e., merely absorbed) paradigms. Real learning lies beyond mere absorption.

We look through the screen of what we were taught… and what we see is what was implanted into us.  Very few of us go beyond that very limited domain.  We are used to (i.e., accustomed to) limitation, we live in limitation, we accept limitation, and we fight… in childish political parties, divisive religions, separative countries, and isolated, small self-concepts… all involving gross and crass limitation.  Limitation occurs when the mind is spewing with boundaries of demarcations, when barren, symbolic representations endlessly clutter the mind.  Merely absorbing and assimilating limitation is easy.  Any languorous or inattentive mind can do that.

Fortunately, there are a few who look beyond the muddle and go beyond it.  They are not the ones who write the innumerable mystery books that have no real mystery to them, and within… (and there are plenty of so-called mystery books like that).  They are not the ones carelessly driving into dead-end streets while childishly trying to entertain us. They are not the ones in high office, dressed in fancy clothes (or wearing hierarchical robes) jabbering away, but with real apathy behind it.  They are not the ones with their images plastered on the cover of popular magazines.

We think that we control what we think… but we are what we think.  We have accepted separation as an essence of our fundamental perspective.  (We think that we are separate from what we think… and that we control it.)  We (most of us) have merely absorbed what we were “taught.”  However, that kind of teaching, from which we were “taught,” may not be real teaching at all.  Real teaching involves penetrating the superficial.  Real teaching involves tearing down false limitations and puny demarcations to reveal and allow deep, profound insight.  Wholeness, real wholeness, is not a concept.  It is not something concocted from an accumulation (or bundling) of the many things that one sees or was “taught” to see.

Many of us are second-hand shadows, congratulating each other on what remains superficial and fragmentary. The ramifications of this involve a world being harmed more and more by very limited minds.  To question what we were taught, and to go beyond it, may be the beginning of true wisdom.  True wisdom stands alone… and it does not depend.  True wisdom may not exist for one who wishes to wallow in the comfortable shadows of what it was conditioned to become by society.

www.eternalfountainofyouth.com   

from Walt Whitman:

I believe that a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars…

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Photograph “Leaves of Grass” by Thomas Peace (copyright 2012)