Recently, within the last week or two, one of the regular blogs that i visited, as part of a rather poetic posting that it had about things to accomplish, mentioned — among other things — “becoming whole.” Not wishing to criticize here, but that posting — like so many blogs that are similar to it by well-meaning others — has very good intentions but (one feels) misses the mark (so to speak). (Unfortunately — for others — people who write about wholeness and mindfulness, but who have never actually gone through deep and profound enlightenment — though their intentions are good — are like blind men writing about the beauty of good photography.)
To have the aspiration of “becoming whole” may seem well and good but it may actually have the unintentional backfiring effect of being quite misleading and misdirecting. For instance, do any of us deeply question “what” or “who” is going to be “becoming whole”? If what purports to become whole is some illusory “center” that one has accepted (via miseducation) as some kind of core controller in the middle of consciousness that is (supposedly) orchestrating things, then one may be wasting time with fictitious, barbaric paradigms. Frankly, as one has pointed out in numerous blogs (previously), there is no legitimate “center” that is in control. (And do not misconstrue this; this does not mean, because of a lack of a true center, that one should get all depressed about a lack of security and eternity in life; nothing could be further from the case. Security, order, and eternity are there in abundance with right understanding.)
If there is no legitimate center, and there isn’t, then what is it that is going to psychologically “become”? One may become a better cook, a better gardener, a better photographer (over time). These all have to do with physical improvements over (and in) time regarding fragmentary and sequential frameworks… and in such frameworks, they are quite valid. However, wholeness — real wholeness, not silly mental constructs and fabrications about what wholeness is — may be beyond the framework of time. Time, thought, and everything in time (including thought) is fragmentary and sequential. Real wholeness is a timelessness beyond all of this. And an illusory, petty little “center” — that one has blindly accepted from society (from your parents and educators) as being legitimate — purportedly thinks that it can progress (in sequential time) to what it says is whole. It cannot. An illusory fragmentation (as an accepted image of something “central”) cannot become what is pristine and what is beyond sequential, time-oriented paradigms.
It would be prudent, before proceeding on a quest for truth, to do so without carrying a heavy load of preconceptions/presumptions (i.e., a heavy load of baggage). And without the psychological baggage, it may be that there would not be a false, fragmentary network seeking what it could never be. And there is great beauty in that.
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 
So delicate , the mother natura is amazing! Great capture Tom!
Thank you, Marcela! 🙂
Beautiful image, full of “points” as is your prose. Especially “prudent, before proceeding on a quest for truth, to do so without carrying a heavy load of preconceptions / presumptions” – I’ve come to trust that “I don’t know” is the best answer to any of life’s quandaries – and proceed with curiosity. Even hindsight blurs into “I don’t know” …
Yes, Jazz, “I don’t know,” is a good non-brainwashed realization to be involved in. 🙂 Too many of us accept and feel that it is safe and comfortable. It was safe and comfortable for many Germans to stick with Hitler during WW 2, but was it intelligent and full of deep understanding?
At first I thought your photo was brightly coloured birds all perching 🙂
Some of them do somewhat appear to have eyes! 🙂
I am still a seeker. I love native spirituality. I love nature. I believe in acceptance, forgiveness, empathy and compassion. We will only walk this good earth once. Our choices and decisions have a ripple effect that does affect others, our world, our collective consciousness. I believe we are connected – ALL – not only human beings but all of nature. What we do to one we do to all. I know I am carrying preconceptions and presumptions and I am working at freeing myself. The more I begin to know the more I realize How much I really don’t know. And that’s okay. I am content to sit with the mysteries. Anyway that’s my two cents worth. I love the photo by the way.
Beyond being all connected, we are all one thing… only most of us do not realize it.
Stay spiritual and keep loving mystery, Carol! 🙂
Thanks, Tom. I will. 🙂
Exactly so Tom.
Yes, Paul, so glad that you see something there. 🙂 It’s so very easy for people to make blundering assumptions/presuppositions and continue to think/feel that they are doing the “right thing.”
Yes, so agree.
I had to look twice to see what was hanging on a falling clothesline – such beauty in the wild. 🙂 I hope people who got their first taste of enjoying nature during the lockdown, never forget that exhilaration as we slowly (hopefully) get back to our “final new normal” – that is my wish. I could lose myself in nature every day given a chance to do so.
Too many of us neglect nature or rarely appreciate it. I even bring nature indoors some, like with the aquariums. I, just the other day, for instance, purchased a plant (from online) called Corkscrew Val. The old Mom and Pop Aquarium stores, way back when i was a kid, had plenty of Corkscrew Val in their tanks; now there is the run-of-the-mill boring Super Pet Stores and they have crap for plants. (Some of the plants that they sell for aquariums are terrestrial plants – really not for aquariums – and are programmed to die.) The fellow who sold me the Corkscrew Val grew it in some of his own tanks and it is just beautiful! The fish look stunning in the spiraling plants (as they – the plants – meander to the water’s surface). The variety that he had was especially nice! 🙂
I remember you had a post about your aquariums Tom, so it is worth it to go the extra mile to make it a healthful environment for the fish and pleasing to the eye as well. That’s terrible that the growers raise the plants with the expectation that they will die off, so you’ll buy more. I am continuously amazed by what people say.
I was at Elizabeth Park today and a woman landed a large-mouthed bass. I watched her get a tug on her line and I had my camera handy – obviously a seasoned fisherwoman, she took it off the hook in a half-second and held it up and a guy took a photo while she posed. I took her picture too. I would have no idea how to remove the hook and keep that fish from getting hurt, because she let it go about three minutes after she posed with it. 🙂
Some fish swallow the hook so deeply that one cannot remove it safely. That is why i do not engage in fishing.
“who have never actually gone through deep and profound enlightenment”
Even by way of reason. Strumming the same awkward note and dangling the perpetual carrot of the western religious mindset, yet feel they are on to something special—that they have arrived through belief which is actually their barrier.
Our culture is taught to always plan for a future, that happiness lie in promises, and never are prepared to live today. A few lectures from David Godman or any other form of eastern philosophy can certainly free the mind to the possibilities. As you already know, believing the past causes the present condition is only true because one believes that. It isn’t so, any more than the wake powers the ship ⚔️
Oh, one likes that… “the wake powers the ship.” 🙂
What gets me is that so much of what they accept and believe in is not even rational, but then, they don’t want to think. They were molded and trained not to think. They were molded and trained to blindly accept and to conform. The past gets (and is) conditioned to project into (and as) the present, so the present is never really present (and the future is an empty, learned belief).
The past is a memory, the future—an expectation, all existing only in the present.
As a side note; one of the things I like about forgiveness. Forgiveness changes the meaning of the past. There are wholesome reasons to practice it way beyond a religious model of divine retribution.
Part of the problem with the past is we have been conditioned to demarcate things into separate events, yet there are no separate events. It is simply a calculus—a deciding point of consensus to help us make sense of the world in a certain way. Yet it isn’t that way at all. I could go on all night on that one.
Fine post as usual sir.
Yes, the problem with the past is that we have been conditioned to demarcate things into separate events. Even the scientists are looking (for the most part) in that conditioned way… and they go on analyzing things ad infinitum (never seeing the big picture).
Forgiveness is excellent. But one is wise to be cautious with regard to it. One has found out the hard way that some people will rake you over the hot coals (caring nothing about your forgiveness).
The future (for most people) is also a memory… an extension from (and as) past memory involving how things might be or should be. The beauty of deep insight is that it can show the true future (without being influenced by past superficial memory/thinking).
I think of wholeness not with respect to the individual but when a person is situated in the rest of nature as a part of a greater whole.
Yes, it has nothing to do with a separate individual. I understand what you mean by being situated in the rest of nature as part of a greater whole. Wholeness is much more than nature, nature having, within it, a lot of competition, violence, and ruthlessness, though it also has a lot of cooperation, sharing, tenderness, and love.
You Stated — “but who have never actually gone through deep and profound enlightenment ”
My Response — One can easily become whole and I suspect that the post you read was from a person who had achieved that goal.
BUT
For one to achieve that goal one has to have limited goals, few understandings, segregated interactions, and blinders on.
Becoming whole is like your life and understanding, is a cup filled with water.
Not being whole is like your life and understanding, is a swimming pool half-filled with you on the deck looking out at the ocean.
Just a thought
Sorry, but one must disagree with you. Wholeness is not a goal that you can achieve. It’s not the end of some endeavor as a mere effect. The person who wrote the post that i read was like a blind man giving a lecture on the beauty of good photography. Most people can easily have a conception or a feeling about wholeness… but that is not wholeness.
Deep and profound enlightenment, as instant Satori, involves three things that happen to the physical organism as the enlightenment is taking place. No one who writes about wholeness and/or meditation (in blogs or otherwise) can tell me what they are.