Thursday, October 17, 2013

To Really See a Thing


You have to stare.

You have to stare so long that all the thoughts and feelings and associations run their course, get bored, and run off to lives on the coast.

Then, when all that chatter dies down, you might be lucky enough to see the thing as it is.

As it is in all the miracle of its form at this moment.

Even a humble chunk of gravel, the modest aggregate of granite, or quartzite, or garnet, is in motion, in transit, an ongoing event.

The zebra-tail and desert spiny lizard share this pulsing ephemerality. 

How did all those atoms come together to make this shape, color, texture, and ongoing event of this thing as it is?

If you begin to know the answer to this question, you are likely old enough to see that you too are a moving mass of energy, that most likely is in some form of decline. Your heart knows that what you call "me" is shutting down, slowly, and that this particular expression and arrangement of form is in transition.

Then part of you will know the loss and perhaps be afraid.

But you cannot lose something that you truly know, and you cannot truly know without grieving the loss of what is, and loss becomes joy as you witness what is becoming. Joy and grief trade places.

Joy and grief allow you to really see the thing, but are not a substitute for knowing the thing. That comes later when there is no longer any difference between the two.

Then there is no Other. You are the thing you see, the thing you seek.

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