Learning to see with full on clarity, openness and honesty requires us to suspend our habitual assumptions. Interrupt our impulse and allow meaning to seep through the innocence.
Whenever we judge others without this reference point, whenever we have built the scenery in our hearts before we have opened our eyes and seen what lies before us, heard the story in our inner ear before anyone has even opened their mouth, decided what is locked in the heart and minds of other people, when we don’t even know what is in our own, these are the moments of truth, when we run blind and lock ourselves in the tedious snare of our own making.
In every interaction, in every day our character is called into question. When we are tired, lazy or pre-occupied with our ‘self’ we forget what it means to see. We cannot be still or silent, we comfort ourselves with the clutter and noise because it is our clutter and noise. Whenever we are not self aware, we create the pain that we can project and layer on the very people who we could not be not bothered to seek out in the first place.
All of this discomfort comforts wells up inside us cluttering our minds because our fear conceals what we feel we cannot afford to face or feel. Fear is our vehicle not our viel. We wrap our hearts in the cold comfort of fear, so we dare not risk a single moment to touch anything new, discover unknown and unknowable truths.
We are too busy with reality to make it stop, for even one split second to be still and see it for what it is .
Let pale-fac’d fear keep with the mean-born man,
And find no harbour in a royal heart.
Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought,
And not a thought but thinks on dignity.
My brain, more busy than the labouring spider,
Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies.
Well, nobles, well; ’tis politicly done,
To send me packing with a host of men:
I fear me you but warm the starved snake,
Who, cherish’d in your breasts, will sting your hearts.
Henry VI (Scene iii, Act i)
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