Experiencing is magical, involving great curiosity and wonderment. However, most people never consider what i’m about to say — and it may seem rather absurd, at first — but it may also be prudent to often be beyond regular experience. In regular experience as most know it, the “experiencer” is separate from the experience. However, such a notion is largely illusory; the experiencer is not separate from the experience. The experiencer is the experience. Please see it! And all regular experience is limited. Regular experience involves recognition (i.e., re-cognition), is fragmentary, accumulative, and time-bound.
If you purposefully practice being beyond experience, like, for instance, by sitting cross-legged, with the eyes closed… you are still (whether you admit it or not) in deception and illusory effort. Existing beyond regular, mundane experience takes no effort; one cannot do it by an act (i.e., reaction) of definite will. It can take place at any time of the day, unplanned/unrehearsed. It is by no means a form of “spacing out” or a lack of awareness. Ordinary experience — as most people do it — requires recognition (via the field of the known); the known is limited and time-bound. We were never taught about this, and (for most) it never entered our minds. We look through (and “as”) psychological screens that we had learned; they were molded into us. Multitudes of people go from one experience — involving mere recognition — to another, perpetually and habitually reacting. Real wisdom, on the other hand, may be far more dynamic than that.
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 
Totally! 💯
Thank you, M.T.! Hoping your day is going well. 😉
You always give us food for thought Tom and in this case, food to look at. I’d rather see the lobsters in the tank than on a plate! Or, to take it a step further, out in nature where they are living their best life!
Thanks much, Linda, but they are certainly not food to look at. They are not lobsters. They are pet shrimp in many of my aquariums. They are all a little under an inch long, full-grown. I like them because they are always peaceful with each other, get along well with the fish, and reproduce in all the aquariums that they are kept in. They are called Painted Fire Reds. Another favorite of mine are called Blue Dreams. They are a wonderful blue color. I take great care of the aquariums and have been doing this aquarium stuff for 65 years.
That’s funny Tom as I just commented earlier tonight that you had your aquarium life and parrots to do macro photography. I apologize and sometimes forget this is a macro shot so a shrimp and not a lobster. Years and years ago a neighbor in Canada had piranhas and he fed them hamburger meat and all the kids in the neighborhood would go to Dave’s house at feeding time.
When i was a kid, a guy in Hammond, Indiana, who sold aquarium fish from his garage, had a big tank of piranhas. One day, the water in the tank was cloudy, and just when he was about to change the water, he noticed that the cloudiness was due to hundreds of baby piranha in the water. Lots of money was made from that spawning.
That is amazing and yes, I’m sure he was able to make a lot of money on the offspring. As kids we were just fascinated with the piranhas. He was an interesting guy, a forensic meteorologist and he drove an Isetta, a three-wheeled car that looked a bit futuristic and he used to take the neighborhood kids for rides. He had two sons … all the kids in the neighborhood were the same age. Fun times when we were young for both of us.