The education to empower people to
transform
their lives is not offered in schools. I propose that every reputable
institute of learning offer a program entitled
"Transformation
101" based on
Werner's work.
This essay,
Seeing Is Not Believing (Seeing Is Seeing And Believing Is
Believing), would be required reading in its syllabus. It
fleshes out one of the essential rich distinctions of
transformation:
that you are not your mind, and that contrary to the old adage, seeing
is not believing.
There is no mystery regarding from where I derive my subject matter for
these
Conversations For
Transformation:
I'm inspired to look into my own space and to document whatever I see
there.
In this kind of research the essence of experience is both the object
and the subject of scrutiny. I draw conclusions from what I see looking
into that context as well as coming from it.
Actually it may be preferable to not draw any conclusions at all. I use
conclusions to express the value in what I observe. Yet I know this
also has the unwanted unavoidable secondary effect of shifting my work
out of the domain of
direct experience
and into the domain of thoughts and beliefs. And the truth believed is
a lie.
Seeing -
direct experience
- occurs in the domain of
what's so.
Believing - which is not so much
interpretation
as it is preferredinterpretation
- occurs in the domain of the way I would like it to be. There's
nothing wrong
with either of those worlds per se. Both are the territory of being
human. It is simply adult to recognize (and to keep on recognizing
ongoingly) that the two are distinct. As a matter of fact, on that
recognition the very best of
Zen
is grounded.
Arguably there is no distinction more valuable, no distinction more
sublime, and no distinction worth creating more than the distinction
between seeing and believing. I am not saying that like some gospel
fact. Nor am I saying it with any righteousness. As an opinion it is
not worth much, and whatever you do, do not believe it,
certainly not just because I said it.
Rather, I am saying it as something to try on like a perspective to
look from and to experience the power, the clearing, and the opening
looking from it. For some this will not be a new perspective. For
others it will be revolutionary. Once that distinction is created for
the first time, life is never the same again. That distinction in and
of itself has the power to open the floodgates of
transformation.
But distinctions have a short half-life. They need to be created again
and again and again. Distinctions only have value as long as they are
alive. And because they only live in the domain of language, in time
distinctions will fade, lose their potency, and eventually disappear
altogether if left unspoken. The way to keep the distinction between
seeing and believing alive is to create it again and again and again
and then again and then again some more, and to choose to speak it
again and again and again and then again and then again some more.
This is the access to the realm of the miraculous.
This essay,
Seeing Is Not Believing (Seeing Is Seeing and Believing Is
Believing),
recreates the
Observations
chapter of my
thesisBREAKTHROUGH
SKYDIVING
which is available at