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

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This is not a grasshopper.

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[There is that very famous painting, entitled “The Treachery of Images” (1928-1929), by the late Belgian painter, Rene Magritte.  (He is one of my favorite painters, by the way!) The painting has the words, in French, stating: “This is not a pipe.”  This is so very true.  It’s an image of a pipe and is not (at all) a real pipe.  So many of us think, using symbols (which all thoughts and mental images are) without ever really looking directly without all the imagery and thought.  We look through (and “as”) the screen of thought and rarely (if ever) see directly (without the imagery).  Both paintings and thoughts are (in a big way) virtual. Real intelligence can go beyond that. What most of us see, unfortunately, is often just an empty shell of what really is.

The following picture is not a grasshopper.  Even if it were a macro photograph of a live grasshopper… it would still not truly be a grasshopper.  It is not a dead grasshopper.  It is a photograph of a grasshopper’s exoskeleton… the outer shell of an insect which insects shed from time to time as they grow and enlarge.  But it really is not a grasshopper’s exoskeleton… and what you see is often what you were taught, and what you were taught is often what you see.  ;)]

This is not a grasshopper. Photo by Thomas Peace 2014

The Treachery of Images… by Rene Magritte