It’s amazing to uncover that you can spend an entire lifetime and never know yourself at all, but rather only know a perception of yourself. A projected self image (ego) which virtually has nothing to do with who and what you are. Likewise people pass in and out of our lives every day. We talk to them, we eat lunch with them, we go to work with them and most of what we know and think about them are merely thoughts and perceptions.
"They are like that", "she is this way," "He’s a republican," "She’s a liberal." Label after label, we cast them upon those around us and remain blind to the very people before our eyes. In turn, almost everyone else is also walking around with perceptions of themselves and with perceptions about you and I, that are nothing more than fiction.
It’s like we’re all in virtual bumper cars bouncing off each other without ever truly making contact. The endless stream of labels and perceptions we cast upon each other, perpetually keeps us immersed in a world of delusion in regards to our relationship with the universe around us and to the common bond we all share.
The next time you find yourself at odds with somebody, try and squelch the little label maker in your mind and just see the person as they are. In silence we can uncover: that the differences just don't exist. They were never really there to begin with.
Our thoughts and perceptions are made of nothing. They have no substance at all other than the life we breathe into them. If you look long enough at those around you and let the labels fall away back into the nothingness from which they came, eventually you may find yourself here in this moment, looking straight back upon yourself through their eyes.
As we learn to listen and watch without labeling one another, our common thread shines through and through.
~Written by Russell Satori
