Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog

A totally different dimension of mind can take place.  What nearly all people take to be reality is a far cry from what truly exists (beyond delusion).  Most are walking around oblivious to what is really possible.  They have accepted secondhand images, secondhand patterns, secondhand symbols, dissected labels, measurements, and cold statistics to be their reality; such reality is akin to taking shadows to be concrete substances, toys to be living things, silly iPhones messages to be substantive.  Even our images of self are essentially secondhand patterns that we have assimilated and absorbed.  Then, these images of self are involved with images of another (a spouse, for instance); one set of images is involved with what are considered images of another.  A (relationship between secondhand images of self and — then, also, down the road of psychological time — secondhand images of another) may largely be based on learned, sequential patterns (of recognition and categorization); such a programmed arrangement (based merely on absorbed patterns/symbols/images) may not be much of a relationship at all.  It is a relationship of secondhand patterns.  What kind of relationship is that?

Life is tremendously much more profound and deep than what learned symbolism, categorization, and information processing are involved with.  If you just stick to those three, that the previous sentence mentions, what you are is likely normal… but you certainly may not be what goes beyond the superficial.  People all throughout life are all too willing to tell you how to think, what to do, how to live.  So many, blogs included, want to give you spiritual templates, philosophical instructions.  There are infinite “expert non-experts” out there; just today, one saw a blog wherein the author stated that to fix our life problems, we have to find the right templates, the right instructions.  It may be, however, that real life is much too vast, flowing, multidimensional, and alive for any set of cooked-up “shoulds,” instructions, blueprints, or stale templates.   

You won’t be getting any die-hard templates from me.  It may be that the timelessness of real wisdom exists only when self-concocted effort and struggle cease (psychologically).  Such ceasing involves an ending that doesn’t take time, that doesn’t rely on blueprints, instructions, or processes.  Most, however, are frightened about psychologically coming to an end (i.e., about psychological dying); most continue to cling to potty little images of self.  Therein lies sorrow; the irony is that, without psychologically ending, their sorrow will never really end.   Many of us merely depend upon (and exist “as”) patterns and symbols.  Be certain here that we are not at all suggesting ending physically; physical existence is an opportunity and a privilege that can involve keen (unspoiled) awareness and dynamic flowering.  Physical death is not for me (except for the wonderful fossils that i collect).  Psychological dying, however, is a whole other ballgame.  The psychological dying to stale, secondhand, dead symbols and images is real living.

from E.E.Cummings:

dying is fine)but Death

?o
baby
i

wouldn’t like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying
’s miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly
scientific
& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee
god
almighty for dying
(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death

Wasp reflecting deeply… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018