If we recall our Jr. High/Middle School health and biology classes, we might remember that the human eye really doesn’t see anywhere near as much as we believe it does. We do have fairly wide field of view, but our peripheral is super-vague. We can really only see the very centre of our vision clearly.
This means that the light bouncing off of the thing, or person, or activity witnessed by us, travels up a tube of light that enters our eye and hits the back of our retina, and then our brain turns electronically converts that strike of photons into our visual reality. That miracle happens every time we open our eyes.
The same holds true for our soul. Except rather than a tube of vision through which light travels, our soul has a tube of attention up which experience travels. The vision tube, along with the ones for our other senses, are bundled together inside the tube of experience.
That tube grows longer the older we live. And the emotional forces in our lives; like love, rejection, trust and crisis, all bend that tube, making each of us unique.
When it comes to perceiving reality, that bending effect acts like a lens, meaning that every person who looks at the same thing, or person, or activity, will see it differently, only after it has been warped by their own historical lens of experience.
Wisdom does not come from us artificially forcing our tube of experience to be perfectly straight. Wisdom is a recognition that the tube is always there, and that no one person’s bends are better than any other.
Accepting that fact means accepting that reality a collective, shared invention. If we truly understand that, then we become less attached to our singular version of it. That makes us more fluid and flexible and that in turn brings peace to our lives.
When we have that type of vision and ability, we can then truly live and let live. And that ability alone can save marriages and end wars.
Let’s spend the next few days thinking about our eyes and ears etc. as these individual tubes that all braid into our larger tube of experience. And then, as we move through our day, we can try to see our emotions as the forces that put those bends into our vision.
No matter what we feel, we don’t need to judge what we experience. We only need to note how it was created. Three days of sincere study into what we place into our tube of experience is a very useful meditation when it comes to raising our overall awareness.
The reason that awareness brings value into our lives is because, once we truly grasp our role in the formation of our experiences, we start using that knowledge to our advantage by becoming very judicious about what experiences we choose to take in, and when.
The question now is, when our attention shifts away from this post, where will it go and why….?
peace. s
