Seeing, in the finest and broadest sense, means using your senses, your intellect, and your emotions. It means encountering your subject matter with your whole being. It means looking beyond the labels of things and discovering the remarkable world around you. - Freeman Patterson
"It's an ugly day--you're going out walking?" my Mom asks incredulously.
Ugly? The sky is overcast, that's about it.
In fact, I'm aware that many people would consider the walk I embarked on yesterday and the day before and the day before that around the neighborhood to be ugly, boring, mundane, meh. Devoid of spicy content, stark, or at least if there were any redeeming beauty it'd be understated. I could point out the prettier parts of that journey: the matte glow of quartzy peaks (not glossy finish like other gems) backdropping the skyline at sunset, the white plum blossoms fluffy light as snow... but those treats are far and in between and for the most part, the reaction would be a shrug.
Not getting caught up in the labels "good/bad", "right/wrong", "negative/positive", "better/worse", "attraction/aversion" is sufficiently Zen enough practice. However, lately I have also noticed the subtle external pressure to assert the plum tree's beauty, and downplay the straggly Mormon tea. The fascination and, dare I say it, agape I've sensed over broken tile and chunks of amber glass and the chain link pattern and the tin foil wrapped around a yucca is impossible for me to convey. But you need not my translation of that seeing, Awareness peers through the same eyes as you or I. And it's available at each moment.
The "beauty/ugly" dichotomy comes up more in art--so perhaps in our writing or snapshots or sketches or films, but it originates in our observations and interpretations. We're not going to write about what we don't even see (or acknowledge as part of existence).
"I am not interested in shooting new things--I am interested to see things new." - Ernest Haas
The pull to only affirm the beautiful (or even find that label relevant) got harder to pull off mentally when I started one practice in the past month or so.
It can be a difficult practice to begin. Basically, I would apply a question to anything that showed up in my life, or already was part of it--instead of immediately looking to change it, fix it, evade it, figure it out, dismiss it, embrace it, criticize it or whatever the impulse might be--and in the last year, I'd say the tendency has been towards idea, "That shouldn't be [happening]," or "This is working out the wrong way."
"We see what we conclude about the world." - Adyashanti, March 9, 2011 video satsang
I changed my mind and gave the Universe the benefit of the doubt. I asked: What if a vaster Intelligence, not separate from myself, did know exactly what it was doing (i.e. ahem, I am not in charge or control of It) and everything is unfolding just as it should?
Perhaps I didn't comprehend Reality's point of view--but did that make it wrong? Maybe not. I relaxed more around the question.
I'd apply it to everything as it was occuring and even went so far as using it with a recurring memory affecting me in present-tense: What are three reasons I can come up with (not necessarily anything Truth would give as any answer, since I don't know) that this should have happened as it did? (And yes, there is always the Byron Katie answer, which might go something like: "Because it did happen that way, and I am no longer interested in fighting against reality." But I was trying to stretch further.)
Eventually 'reality' felt like 'totality' and in the last week it has been difficult to distinguish things or events or scenarios or beings as "ugly" or "beautiful." Even to say that it's all beautiful, doesn't quite feel truthful--it's not necessary. As I said, I am quite aware of the cultural expectations of things and events and how the majority perception and compartmentalization, but as I look at things those labels have become irrelevant.
"Seeing the smallest dewdrop, you can stand in awe of perfection." - John Shaw
p.s. I like the synchronicity of Freeman Patterson quote, finding out he has a Masters in Divinity, and also the symbolism--a free man, a free being. Oh, yes, actually you can feel euphoric rush on actually seeing little brown grasses through the eyes of Awareness... touch the "primordial ground where distinction never gazed" --Meister Eckhart:
"...I often tell about one December morning, back about 1993, when I looked out on the field behind my house. The grasses had been tall and very brown, but had been smashed down by snow, and when the snow had melted, they appeared to be all woven together, integrated. And then a smattering of snow had come again - so now there were medium, neutral brown grasses all woven together covered with tiny flakes of white and little pin pricks of black shadows here and there. When I looked at it all, I ran for the camera and the tripod and spent about 45 minutes shooting this tapestry – all the while carefully avoiding any line or shape that might function as a centre of interest. As I did, I kept getting higher, and higher, and higher. I was in a state of euphoria by the time I was finished. So I made some tea, went back out and sat on the deck and looked at this field and asked myself what’s going on here. Obviously something significant was going on because you don’t get into a state of euphoria over shooting some brown grasses with a little snow on them." - Freeman Patterson
ART CREDITS: Route 66, by Ernest Haas; last two photographs by Freeman Patterson via this great inteview by Chris Maher and Larry Berman.
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