prose

Looking out Looking in

When we, people, look at each other - we have a perspective from outside, it is just like looking at a house from outside; we can see that the house is red, and has three stories and the front face is to the North. Someone inside the same house looking out the window, can tell none of these things. However, all of our perceptions of the external world are subject to our own internal interpretation. This is where the idea of Maya comes from (from the buddhist and hindu traditions.) Since our entire awareness of the external world is an interpretation or "map" contained within the sphere of our consciousness, it has no more tangible reality then any well perpetrated illusion. The only thing we can access without the interpretive map of our consciousness is our self.

However habitually, it is not uncommon for us to still apply our lens of consciousness when we look at ourselves. Turning my awareness inward, I often find myself describing my experience of my inner States in English or pictures, both translations of the raw data. Meditation is the art of dropping descriptive constructs - which then reveals the essential State of experience.

Ironically, once we experience our self in this state, our physical senses are accessed directly without the lens of interpretation, and through that we know the "external" universe "directly".