We humans — most of us anyway — have a preoccupation with forms which rely on demarcations and which distinguish surfaces. We react to parameters just as we were instructed to, and we are satisfied to allow our brains to remain within those circumscribed fields. Even the so-called great scientists are immersed in the same methodologies and modes of perception and analysis. Most conform to standard patterns, even when they think that they are sophisticated and free. Most have been taught not to trust experience and feeling until they have passed through (and have been filtered by) the organizing chambers of rational thought. Most, rather like computers, have become mere information processors and, therefore, pitifully impoverished organisms.
We still — most of us anyway — have subject and object, self and other, man and nature. Most have very separative minds seeing things fragmentarily (with separation and division). Concepts and conditioning can never perceive the truth, yet most, even the professional scientists, remain caught within the realm of concepts and conditioning. Such conditioning can be modified and can evolve some, but it will never perceive and understand the whole over time… and conditioning and evolution are time.
Is it possible for the mind to change radically, such that it goes beyond all influence and all authority of the past? Tribal authority is “the past,” the past which is old, stale, and antiquated. Many can reason very cleverly, very precisely, about a lot of complicated things; but that reasoning inevitably is the essence of a background of a particular conditioning. Truth can manifest when influence and conflict cease, but any methods, beliefs, or systems directly employed to get there will be an extension of the same old game. There is no recipe, in time, that takes one to the timeless. The fabricated/learned psychological self depends upon conflict and time — actually, the separate self is conflict and psychological time — and most people will likely not care to significantly end conditioning; most will want to remain in (and “as”) that conditioning, yet conditioning binds and is suffering. True silence is deep awareness, a selflessness, a timelessness… and true silence is not what the conditioned mind can cause to happen at any particular point in time; the silence of awareness is beyond the self (and self-effort). Most are afraid of allowing the self to come to an end psychologically. Only in the nullification of the false is there the whole blessing of truth and real insight. Compassion and that truth are not two separate things, as is the “perceiver” and “that which is perceived.”
clinging to surfaces… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018
in the heart of the tree… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 
Saying a big yes to this
Good, Paul! 🙂 Many will not!
Nice, much needed commentary…Change is so liberating!
Thank you, SFL! 🙂 Change is liberating, if it actually happens!
Intriguing read. I like to think that generation to generation humans are progressing in their ability to change their thinking, further from conditioned norms. Perhaps that notion stems from my personal conditioned norms. At any rate, I see change as inevitable … even if accepted only in hindsight … even when overwhelming and we’d give anything to slow it down.
Great images! Oh, to crawl inside that tree …
It was a hollow tree on my mother-in-law’s property that was later cut down (due to potential dangers associated with high winds and such). Some people are changing but not — as far as i am concerned — significantly enough. Many (very many) are hardly changing at all. The environment is in real (exponentially rocketing) trouble due to man’s activities (which are not environmentally friendly).
Thank you, Jazz! 🙂
Very insightful post Tom … the older I get, I don’t like change. It’s hard for a leopard to change its spots sometimes. The pictures are interesting … the moth is incredible. Looks like back of a person wearing a cape at first glance.
It’s never too late to change, Linda! We all need to change throughout life. One is always learning, always changing; otherwise, there is stagnation. There is never an end to true learning/changing!
That moth does look like a cape wearer! 🙂
Nice point Tom. As a scientist I can relate. Bob