When I took this picture , I was fascinated with all the "faces " one can find in these rocks. It reminded me how, since a small boy, I had been seeing "things in other things".
Being a kid who liked to draw, eventually evolving into photography, I had, since an early age been able to "see". By seeing, I mean in the sense that the word is used in photography; to be able to find a picture by eliminating "chaos". To reduce a picture to it's necessary elements. Nothing more, nothing less.
The "seeing things in other things" I talked about is also part of this seeing, but it's kind of the reverse. Have you ever seen a piece of torn wallpaper that looked like something? A cat, or a sofa or who knows what. Or the silhouette of a tree in the twilight? Faces appear, innocent shapes are transformed into terrifying or amusing "phantoms ".
It is the nature of the mind to take known shapes, colors, and other sensory stimuli and turn them into recognizable "objects ". While this may be recognized when the "rat " in the corner of the room turns out to be nothing but a discarded, crumpled newspaper, it is much harder to recognize in the "creations " it makes of the "reflections " that it "sees ".
All the time the mind is taking the reflections of the real; the Absolute, and shaping them using memories it has collected. Black/White, Good/Bad, Right/Wrong. Even the "nuances " like shape, size, color, and sex are all "memory things ". The world "swirls " and unfolds around us in infinite and unexpected ways, yet we try to confine it to "words" or familiar images.
When we "see " animals or faces in torn wallpaper, or an abstract pattern in a tile floor, we are experiencing the mind "pulling together " shapes, colors, and patterns into familiar objects. The mind experiences an oval with two protruding elongated shapes on top, and "poof " it's a rabbit, when it is really a silhouette of a cactus, that is shaped "kind of like a rabbit."
Beyond the visual this also applies. When we see a "certain look ", or a hear a certain "tone of voice ", we also make a "mind picture " from past references to that "certain look, tone of voice". This is the point where the "relationship " becomes distorted. We start putting past experiences and past feelings into a fresh situation that is happening now. We not only do this unconsciously in our daily life; this rendering everything stale and repetitive, but we intentionally and methodically go about doing this in relationships.
We judge others we meet, based on others we've met. We judge other ideas by ideas we've had. Just as the mind "pulls together " colors, shapes, and other attributes to create forms, it also takes attitude, prejudice, and past experience and "pulls " them together into "relationship ". From Love comes the desire to express itself. The "expression ", which is "us " and the "other " in "relationship ", is seized by the mind and made subject to past memories, prejudices and attitudes. It is a total distortion.
An undistorted mind, an undistorted view, is to see the discarded newspaper in the "rat ", and behave accordingly. The "practice " lies in seeing each day and each relationship as fresh, new, full of potential. Every moment is fresh, don't let the mind hijack it into repetitive mediocrity. Don't get lost in the pictures your mind creates from the reflections, get fascinated with the Source . Your fascination will bring you home.
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