“We have become perceptual jailers of each other”
(Castaneda, Torres, Encounters with the Nagual)
We want the world around us to make sense. We desperately cling to interpretations because everything feels so safe when we think we understand it. Instead of observing and listening, we engage in desperate interpretation. Uncertainty only turns into confusion if it is resisted. The acceptance of uncertainty is a key to healing and growth.
The need to make sense of the world has a very real effect on the world itself; it, so to speak, solidifies it. This is also true about human interactions. Human beings not only solidify the world, but they solidify each other, trapping themselves and other human beings in their thought-forms. In our anxious need to make sense of the world we lose sight of the mystery that life is on every level. We think we know our friends, loved ones, or simple acquaintances. We also think we know ourselves. This 'knowledge', however, is only an opinion, and as such is limited.
“Anything that is limited will inevitably create conflict.”
(J. Krishnamurti)
Truth and freedom go together. There cannot be one without the other. How do we free ourselves from the perceptual jail of our limited vision? The answer seems to be in the question itself; by expanding our vision. And how do we expand our vision? How do we visit different worlds? Perhaps by learning how to soften this one instead of solidifying it.
What do we see when we interact with another human being? Do we 'interact' with a projection of him/her of our own making? Are we aware of how we are trapping them by this thought-form?
Are we aware that other people's thought-forms are trapping us? Are we aware of how we are trapping ourselves by projecting our own shadow self onto the other, in an attempt to avoid
facing it?
Awareness allows us to get a taste of what
lives beyond the reach of thought-forms. It allows us a chance to see others in their truth, to feel their being beyond form, and thus to contribute to the realization of that truth. It allows us to be conscious of how we are being trapped by other people's thoughts too, and thus opening a way to literally grow out of them. A deeper awareness is an act of healing.
Awareness entails that we suspend forming ideas and opinions, it entails living in the silent and receptive respect of uncertainty; like a child, to always allow room for the mystery to emerge.
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