Observation is really a keystone of spirituality, as well as science. The capability we call observation runs deeper than the sense. As a matter of fact, there are whole scientific and military disciplines focused on “training” observation even though our senses work. The eastern teachings pointed out that senses are distracting and meditation is, in a way, a systematic form of observation, but it is often overlaid with the religious doctrine of whatever creed is teaching it.
What is observed while doing observation? What is observed is not so easily answered as people think it is. They look and say they know what they are seeing. This is why they wind up not observing at all. Observing is discovering. We don’t truly learn intellectually. We can condition our minds and often people can recite “facts” that really have no meaning to them personally. We truly learn when we discover or realize.
Mind, as most people know it, works much like the heart. If you try to focus the mind it just denies the nature of the mind. But the capacity for focus is real and it is beyond the limited faculties of the mind. Observation is not its object. People say “I think” when really it’s more likely they should say “I repeat”. Either they relate experience in language or they relate data that often has been put in their memory without their awareness.
People are very concerned with free will. They consider choice of ideas to be the essence of free will, but really isn’t that sort of limited? Even dream studies show that the most abstract imagery and thinking still has its roots in experience. The mind does something that scientists call reality checking which is really just the brain cross referencing the senses.
Our senses are limited and they are trained. They are the instruments of a language. They are not only lingual. They are also linked to pre-verbal regions of consciousness, but we often drown that pre-verbal awareness out.
It is the part of our minds that is enlivened by being in nature. Limbic mind and the reptilian mind. As a matter of fact, the dominance of cerebral function seems to warp otherwise sound limbic instincts. Twisting natural desires into self destructive addictions even. But the origin of any movement of the mind, for many an invisible origin, is observation not the act. It’s not really something you can do, the doing state of mind as opposed to the zen state of no mind. The relative view in the non forced natural mode. Observation goes farther than the subjective. It is how people without trying arrive at insights during meditation.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~