All Posts Tagged ‘Close-up-Photography

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Second-handedness

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Real mindfulness, real meditation is not sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat.  Such sitting is calculated and is structured to gain something… (which is greediness).  On the other hand, innocent, pristine awareness throughout the day (that is not merely influenced by the patterns and symbols that others have provided) may be very prudent.  Is it real awareness when one is looking with what other people have poured into one?  Is real awareness, real living, what can take place through the secondhand edicts or patterns provided by others?  When perception takes place through mere symbolic images and via learned psychological separation, is such perception what was copied from others and (additionally) limited and superficial?

It may be that secondhand has little to do with actual living.  However, many rely on (and habitually exist “as”) secondhand, without question.   

 

 

0.5 cm Scarlet-and-Green Leafhopper (1) Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2017

0.5 cm Scarlet-and-Green Leafhopper (2) Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2017

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Walking the Tightrope of Life…

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Life is very tough for most of us… and, on the tightrope of life, very few are truly balanced.  They lean on their leaders, their authorities, their gurus, their priests, politicians, and systems, and (through such leaning) they never are truly balanced in the true, deep sense (i.e., on their own).  Their dependence is their falling.  Only when one stands alone (with true independence) from the weight of all their symbols and systems, can one truly move in a balanced, light, and free way.  Most of us adamantly and desperately cling to and rely on (i.e., depend on) an image (which is really just another thought) of an “internal central regulator,” or “controller,” or “me.”  This image, however, is merely an “absorbed” thought (poured into us from others).  Though we habitually and tenaciously cling to it as being “central,” and our core,  there is — in reality — nothing truly central about it.  This learned image often nurtures illusory conflict, separation, indifference, and friction (both internally and externally); the mind can function vastly more efficiently without it; clinging to it is another primitive, fragmentary form of  unrefined dependence.  So, many of us have dependencies so ingrained within us we are even oblivious to their existence.  Most of us are heavily burdened with cumbersome dependencies, desires, separative viewpoints, and weighty symbols and labels (that they fabricated us as) which, inevitably, pull us down.  To be truly simple, light, unburdened, full of poise and stability is (these days, as in the past) a very rare thing.  There are those who talk and write a lot, pretending — to themselves and to others — that their systems and ways are balanced, while (in actuality) they are merely rehashing or quoting what was poured into them (furthering the mold that they emerged from and/or accepted).  Why is it that to be deeply, psychologically free and balanced is possible, but — for most humans — it occurs only very rarely?  Undoubtedly, miseducation has a lot to do with it; additionally, most of us were programmed to imitate.   We spend our days repeating what we absorbed from others; most of us are almost constantly mentally repeating absorbed symbols (and we also use these symbols to perceive).  People inevitably get bored with the same old thing — mentally repeating absorbed symbols is, indeed, old — and then (especially these days) drugs become involved.   Do drugs and alcohol (so popular in this day and age) help in regard to being truly balanced?  The answer (unless you are really inebriated and can’t walk the line) is rather obvious.  To be balanced is to exist as equilibrium and harmony.  To psychologically be in true equilibrium and harmony, the mind must understand and transcend ignorance and conflict… and that cannot take place if one merely lives as the absorbed frameworks of separation and symbolism that most people accept (and remain in) as normal.  

On the Tightrope of Life. Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2016

On the Tightrope of Life. Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2016