.

.

.

.

.     Thinking, per se, is rather cold and empty.  All thoughts are symbols.  They are fragmentary tokens and representations that we “fabricate” about what reality may be.  They (i.e., thoughts) are tools for dealing with the reality; however, they are not the reality.  The idea of moving deeply through a warm beach full of sparsely clothed, beautiful people (who worship you) doesn’t give one (in the end) a sunburn.  Yet most of us dwell as these “virtual,” symbolic representations almost all of the time… rarely, if ever, going beyond them.  

Exclusively remaining in (and “as”) thought… is a form of suffering.  Thinking is always “about” the reality; it is never the actuality of the reality.  Remaining as “the virtual” is like staying within a computer world… accepting it to be essentially true.  

Unfortunately, very few (these days) actually go beyond the symbolic tools that they were programmed to become.

.

.

.*******************************************************************************************

.

.     from Wallace Stevens:

.

.     Crude Foyer

.

.

Thought is false happiness:the idea
That by thinking one can
Or may, penetrate, not may,
But can, that one is sure to be able – 

That there lies at the end of thought
A foyer of the spirit in a landscape
Of the mind, in which we sit
And wear humanity’s bleak crown;

In which we read the critique of paradise
And say it is the work
Of a comedian, this critique,
In which we sit and breathe

An innocence of an absolute,
False happiness, since we know that we use
Only the eye as faculty, that the mind
Is the eye, and that this landscape of the mind

Is a landscape only of the eye, and that
We are ignorant men incapable
Of the least, minor, vital metaphor, content,
At last, there, when it turns out to be here.

**********************************************************************************

(Left click on the photo to enlarge it; hit left “return arrow” to return.)

*****************************************************************************************

eternalfountainofyouth.com

*****************************************************************************************