One might say that the Iris flower in the accompanying photo is very beautiful. However, real (profound) beauty surpasses what is superficially evident. Profound beauty goes far beyond mere recognition and superficiality. Hitler, for instance, loved flowers; he often gave them to others as gifts. Most of us see, but don’t see. Most of us are neither dead nor alive. It is very ironic, actually. We take for granted that we can see… perceive. We look with separation — between a so-called “center” and “what is seen.” Is seeing partially, seeing fragmentarily, seeing with tainted (i.e., corrupt) eyes… really seeing at all? Most of us accept the authority of others and we look at things in the ways that authority has dictated. We have wholeheartedly accepted a life of imitation, slavishness, being tied to systems, jobs, and routines that are making us more and more robotic, more and more mundane; and we automatons don’t see anything wrong with it. We perceive what we were programmed to perceive; we accept what we were programmed to accept; we fear what we were programmed to fear; we loathe what we were programmed to loathe. We dupe ourselves into thinking that we are somehow out of the box when, all along, we are firmly inside the box. We are the box. We fit into the pattern — that they fabricated — quite nicely, and then we die. That is how most of us (supposedly) live.
That can change if one is serious enough. The integrity and health of the world depend on such seriousness and profundity. Oneself and the world are not two separate things.
Flowering out of the box… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 
monkey agree that there many many robopath walking around. but big question = how make the red pill palatable. monkey figure if it possible for make cigarette or stupid fashion palatable then it must be possible for make truth cool & hip & stylish. maybe truth need big sustained advertising campaign louder & more omnipresent than bellowing from donald the victorious & other father of lies.
Yes, i understand! The trouble is that profound truth is not merely recognizable. It is a living (and sometimes even subtle) thing that is not static, stagnant, and merely “reachable.” (i may hint about it, but that is about all i can do.) Most people are (either through miseducation, social imitation, and even genetics) primarily stuck in “mere recognition,” attaining, acquiring, and easy road maps that “get you there.” However, it’s living and not what can merely be given. Some, such as Christ (in the early Gospel of Thomas) or Lao Tzu may have pondered about it in a very orderly way. However, people — over time — distorted their sayings and have clung to that (easy to accept and recognize) distortion. People are used to distortion and that is one reason the U.S., for example, is such a hodgepodge of lies, environmental neglect, and cruelty in this insane day and age.
monkey agree 100 % and like tom monkey continue work for lifting of veil of maya from inner eyes of human critter. it pretty heavy & opaque veil.
🙂
I believe we are programmed to NOT recognize our programming …
In spite of that or perhaps because of that … your iris image strikes me as gorgeous!
Exactly! Most just stay in the mold and stagnate there.
I’m very appreciative of the flower too, though — like i suggested — there is far more to beauty than that! 🙂
“Spring” from the box, I say!
Yes! 🙂 … but very few of us ever do!
Yes, the seer is the subject, and the seer is unaware, love the call out here Tom.
Yes, Paul, thank you! … and the perceiver depends upon reaction (as limited, psychological, manufactured space) in order to be a center that is separate from the perceived.