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

Integrity is very significant in life. A mind that is merely a sponge, just robotically spewing out what it absorbed, is likely not of integrity. A mind without integrity and order is limited and fragmentary. Integrity means wholeness, soundness. Integrity is of an unadulterated innocence. A mind full of limitations is of conflict and is bound to do divisive and chaotic things. Wholeness exists beyond the limitations. Many of us, when we were younger, accepted behavioral patterns — which society spoon-fed to us — based on competition and conflict. Most of us have accepted such behavioral patterns — largely based on fragmentation and conflict — and have gone on in existence, adhering to these patterns of limitation and conflict. True bliss, however, is not of limitation and fragmentation; true bliss exists with (and “as”) wholeness, integrity. But so many of us have merely accepted what was poured into us when we were young… and we have gone on in the old ways; we have gone on in the antiquated traditions.

Limitation, being based on conflict and tending to produce conflict, inevitably contributes to the divisive and chaotic attributes of society. Limitations — based on conflict — are restrictions, and they snag the mind and keep the mind within (and “as”) constrained and blocked realms. Blocked mental realms often manifest as disorder and conflict. Disorder and conflict do not generally reflect wholeness and integrity.

Interestingly, our very concepts of time are based on fragmentations and limitations. We accepted these time-oriented fragmentations and limitations from society; we fully accepted them as being totally legitimate. However, it may be that we have largely accepted what is fundamentally erroneous and distorted. Our limited conceptualizations of spacetime may be largely fragmentary and perverted; we see what we were programmed to see. Our time conceptualizations may be somewhat relevant physically — in getting actual physical things done — but in the psychological realm, they may be rather absurd, limited, and illusory. One says, “I will try to be less envious of others tomorrow,” but then (at that moment) one creates a space between what one considers to be “oneself” and “others”; one additionally fabricates a “tomorrow” that is separated from “now” by psychological time (which also is of a concocted space). This concocted space is of conflict, which was a distorting factor (initially) in the situation. To live in limitation, conflict, and distortion may not be order, may not be bliss. Deep joy and order may come when distortion ends, when limitation is not just overwhelming.

his looking, day after day
year after year,

Was through the mental screens and motifs
that They provided

Hence, it wasn’t his “looking” whatsoever;
it was Their “looking”

And it wasn’t “seeing” whatsoever;
it was the death-like absence of really seeing