' Waking up to the mystery '...

Thought cannot really see the beauty and mystery of this life. Take, for example, a walk through the forest. In that walk, you are witnessing total wonder, an alien world that cannot be known through thought. Yet the mind comes to label everything that is seen. It believes that in calling one aspect of it a “tree,” it now knows what is there. It believes that those ‘things’ falling to the ground are “leaves.” It believes this whole scene is a “forest.” Thought creates a world of totally separate things. The bare naked Oneness of life is overlooked in that labeling.

In the mind-identified state, the moment a thought is placed on something, the looking stops. The mind falsely believes it knows simply because it has a label and category for everything. The world looks entirely conceptual. Childlike curiosity, innocence, and wonder are veiled by the world of the known. Life is reduced to a set of memorized concepts. You aren't looking, listening, feeling and experiencing life directly.

Waking up doesn’t mean that you stop thinking. Waking up refers to seeing that our thoughts about reality are not reality. They are interpretations, coming from a mind conditioned by memory. In looking freshly at what is here, in noticing our labels for everything as they arise (instead of totally believing those labels), waking up to the mystery is possible.



-Kiloby, Scott. Reflections of the One Life: Daily Pointers to Enlightenment