Concepts condition you, and color your reality...

Concepts condition you, and color your reality...

Concepts are mental versions of labels. They act, however, in the same way. They freeze a thing. They create a snapshot of a person, place or event in a way that is unchanging, unevolving and unadapting. Most of us have seen an overhead projector used, where one transparency was overlaid on top of another. Concepts are like a transparency, a layer put over something which alters its meaning. The info of the original layer is blocked, filtered, and colored in such a way as to change its meaning. In such a way, our conditioning blocks, filters and colors reality and prevents us from experiencing it clearly, unaltered, sans our transparency.

I happen to be in St Louis visiting family. St. Louis, where the wide Mississippi River flows. To a child seeing the river for the first time it is an awe-inspiring sight, something otherworldly, something wild, running free. The child asks what it is. "A river," we say. From that moment on the child can never experience it in the previous way. It is now something that can be taken with the child, kept in his/her box of definitions, to be taken out and examined on a whim. The child now owns the word, as well as the concept associated with it.

But what is this river? Is it the water? The water keeps changing, so it can't be the water we are referring to. Is it the location? An earthquake could alter its location for miles. Is it the shape? The shape is constantly changing along with the depth, the color and clarity of the water. In fact, none of what the child saw when the concept was initiated remains ...except the concept...

We do this with everything. We carry concepts around with us, and use them whenever they are convenient. They are easier to use and take less effort than FRESH experience. Unfortunately, they keep us FROM fresh experience. By applying concepts to things we are free to focus on what our Ego decides is important, to focus on cravings, desires, or to add energy to our apathy, shame, guilt, hatred, pride or anger. Real experience requires wonder, causes awe, brings Joy, Peace and LOVE... and we're much too busy to take the time for any of that. What is sad, is concepts keep us from reality, from living.

Where this manifests itself very clearly is one's concept of God. Take a child as early as possible, as soon as it begins to understand language and begin brain-washing him/her as to "God in Heaven" who will PUNISH you for your sins. God will sit in JUDGEMENT, and if you don't measure up you will burn in the fires of Hell FOREVER!!! And, you MUST believe that ours is the ONLY true God, and everyone else is going to Hell that believes in a different one. And you were born in SIN! And if you don't accept the belief that a man born 2600 years ago, or 2000 years ago, or 600 years ago, is God, you can't go to heaven. You will not be SAVED from Hell... Burn Baby...! Do ya' think this might create a concept? It creates a concept of God that keeps you from eperiencing God, except through this transparency, this indoctrination that has filled you with such fear that for most people, even considering an alternative causes them to cringe in fear.

But that is exactly what you must do to experience God. Most of the great mystics have said as much. Even the great Saint Thomas Aquinas said we must lose God to find him. And he is a canonized SAINT!

All of these "concepts" condition your reality with programming. You see yourself through the eyes of others, through the lens of your career, your identities with church, political party, nationality, etc., etc., etc. ALL of these can change as easily as the water in the river. And when they do, has the real YOU changed? No. So why do you filter your experience with concepts and conditioning, with filters and transparencies?

Today, BE present. Look at things as a child would. Feel the awe, experience the wonder. Don't analyze, don't label, don't judge. When your concepts arise, allow them to dissolve, as a wave dissolves words scratched in the sand. BEcome aware. Reality can only BE experienced through awareness, awareness, awareness...

Duffy