being to timelessness as it’s to time… E.E.Cummings
Time is distance. We perceive with (and “as”) distance, and we remain stuck in time. Of course, you have to keep your doctor’s appointment, which involves a certain physical time and place. (A supposed isolated center looking out, perceives via distance.) Should time be the only domain we function in (and “as”)? This writer says, “No!”
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Lucid, profound perception often sees directly without mere learned and accumulated patterns. In such perception, there is no conception of an “observer” separate from (or independently doing) the “observing”; there is only the observing. If observation occurs exclusively based on past reactions, past memories, past prejudices, and past images involving separation — as it does in so many — then one is looking as an “observer” and primarily with (and “as”) accumulated patterns. Primitive notions that there is an observer that is separate are part of the old, traditional, learned, and accumulated patterns and are a waste of energy… and (directly or indirectly) involve friction, indifference, and conflict.
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Seeing deeply… Photo by Thomas Peace 2015
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. Understanding involves (and is) tremendous sympathy… otherwise it is not true and integral understanding whatsoever.
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Sulphur Butterfly in flight … by Thomas Peace 2013
In Memory of those Budding Children who faded today…
They were beautifully blossoming… and such precious flower buds should never be overshadowed or clipped.
(An insane madman, of darkness, did some ignorant overshadowing.)
from Emily Dickinson:
On such a night, or such a night,
Would anybody care
If such a little figure
Slipped quiet from its chair —
So quiet — Oh how quiet,
That nobody might know
But that the little figure
Rocked softer — to and fro —
On such a dawn, or such a dawn —
Would anybody sigh
That such a little figure
Too sound asleep did lie
For Chanticleer to wake it —
Or stirring house below —
Or giddy bird in orchard —
Or early task to do?
There was a little figure plump
For every little knoll —
Busy needles, and spools of thread —
And trudging feet from school —
Playmates, and holidays, and nuts —
And visions vast and small —
Strange that the feet so precious charged
Should reach so small a goal!
Katy and her blossoming flowers…
Thomas Peace c. 2012
Looking from a limited perspective… what does that mean to you? Have you ever thought about it? Many of us probably perceive through a conditioned background… a background that many of us have “operated from,” but which many of us have never intelligently examined objectively. To perceive things in a fragmentary manner may be to look with a great deal of separation and division.
Many of us go through life “recognizing” things. We recognize one thing after another, as we were taught. Then we write essays, or books, or blogs, or letters, or emails about these multitudinous “things” that we have “recognized.” We often recognize things in the manner or way in which we were taught to recognize them. One’s consciousness is constituted of these “recognized things.” These things that we were taught about have very delineated demarcations and boundaries. We were taught that each thing has a finite domain and a limited space… and we were taught that there is a limited space between us and each of these “things.” (We were taught that fear is there, in us to deal with… not that we and our fears are not separate, not something different.) We continue to write about these things and share these things with others. So, indirectly (or directly) we are continuing to teach and to reinforce the learning/teaching process of others (in the manner that we were taught). Some of us are very good at writing and at conveying images to others via printed words. We get congratulated about what we are writing… and, indeed, some of us develop very lucrative professions due to our ability to hone and craft words in an “artful/intelligent” manner. We give each other prizes (for those who we think did the best job at entertaining us with words and symbols… in a crafty manner).
In the Algonquian Native American family of languages, for instance, there is more of a verb-based structure existent. In other words (no pun intended) more verbs exist, rather than separate things “as nouns.” There’s more of a “doing” and “blending,” rather than an “it-ness” and a “separativeness.” The Ojibwa, the Cheyenne, and the Blackfoot sometimes saw things more together, in a kind of blended movement or flow… rather than as mere separate, isolated “things” very apart from each other.
Animals recognize things, often without having been taught to do so. Dogs recognize what to eat and what not to eat (though what some dogs recognize as being “edible” is not often very beneficial to eat). Cats recognize what is a threat and what is not likely to be harmful. Saber tooth cats (no doubt) could often do so without having been taught by their mother. A lot of this recognition is innate and instinctual. It is at a very crude level. Even insects and spiders can recognize what is an enemy and what is beneficial to eat; oftentimes they are one and the same (in the case of what insects/spiders see as an enemy that is concomitantly likely delicious)!
The consequences of continuing to write with a separative mode (quite similar to what crude bugs and diminutive animals can grasp and attain)… might be extremely profitable for the so-called gifted writer or author who is capable regarding relating in such a manner. However, if we merely continue in that crude, crass, and primal mode (as we have been doing for millennia), then we will have merely continued the process of looking from a limited perspective. We need to evolve from this separative perspective (which merely involves separate things). If we don’t change, then people (with their separative little countries, sects, things, and establishments) will never change fundamentally. Will a fragment, a separate, little self that is divorced from everything else be able to do this? One doubts it. What is limited cannot transcend limitation unless it fundamentally changes into something else. A little insect, sitting on a plant, can’t fundamentally change from the crude limitation that it is immersed (and absorbed) in. Can we?
Katy in Flower
by Thomas Peace c. 2012
Love and be the whole miracle of life… not limited, dead concepts and systems.
Intelligence goes beyond the boundaries of “them” and “us” and dissolves them forever.
It is easy to get lost in the shuffle.
A passionless mind is dead before it ever gets to the grave.
Anything, even a heartless machine, can exist as what it was programmed to exist as.
Separation (from others, for instance) is as a death.
You are responsible for the whole of life, because the whole of life is you.
True beginnings are entwined with (and engaged to) true endings.
The book, which I recently wrote, cannot fail, because even if you do not like it (which is highly unlikely)… it will have succeeded; it can only fail if you think that it is of the “languid orthodox” and that it is cherished by the “numb status quo”… and that cannot ever happen.
Regarding what most of the ungracious masses of separative people have unceasingly clung to: it doesn’t ring true.
Fly like a free Swallowtail… please do not cling to the stagnant flypaper of orthodoxy along with so many others.
Regarding my (i.e.,Thomas Peace’s) book please click on: www.eternalfountainofyouth.com
from Emily Dickinson:
Macro-photography pic taken by Thomas Peace:
I feel that what is important in life… is understanding. For understanding is life, not something divorced from it. If you merely look in a second-hand way — that is, according to accumulations and formulated systems/patterns that were handed down to you — then you likely will be far from being a mind that is truly alive and supple. What is truly alive and supple is not ever the result of rigid, traditional, habitual formulations. If you follow a rigid, fixed path… you might find comfort, but you will not be what directly perceives truth, and you likely will not be what discovers deep mystery. That deep mystery is too alive and unconstrained to be able to be touched by what is second-hand, premeditated, and stale. No dead, fabricated path can lead to (or hold) what is true and what is truly living.
Please read my new book, but please do not cling to it. People who cling to books, to systems, to traditions, to methodologies (in the realm of the psychological and spiritual) are often like flies that get stuck onto stagnant flypaper. They end up being embedded in the conclusions of others, and there they are forever stuck… not ever realizing, for themselves, what true freedom is. So please do not turn my book into something to cling to and to help one become “stuck” (to conclusions about life). Please use my book as a tool for questioning. Question yourself about how others may have indoctrinated you and molded you to become part of what is rigid, second-hand, and obsolete.
Please wisely go beyond my book and beyond me. I, Thomas Peace, am not what is important and I am not what you need to focus on. You are what is important… and you may be so much more than what the supposedly sophisticated intellectuals have told you what you are. Please go beyond what the cultural pundits have shoveled to you. Please share my book with others… not to get them to come to presumptions… not to affix more humdrum ideas into their minds — and, it seems, most all the orthodox ideas are rather “humdrum” — but to invite them to prudently question things for themselves. This questioning may help them to live peacefully and holistically beyond dead conceptualizations, and to fly free (from being secure in the wretched, flat flypaper of stale conclusions). Please learn, for yourself (and not merely from others) about soaring and flying in true freedom. Please do not remain embedded in the old, humdrum patterns that the languid status quo adheres to.
Discover my book at www.eternalfountainofyouth.com
It can also be found by searching for it (via the book’s title) on Amazon.com
In an indirect way, it may be like drinking directly from the Grail cup itself.
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 