8. HOW CAN PERCEPTION OF ORDER OF DIFFICULTIES BE AVOIDED? P 2
3 Where do all these differences come from? Certainly they seem to be in the world outside. Yet it is surely the mind that judges what the eyes behold. It is the mind that interprets the eyes’ messages and gives them “meaning.” And this meaning does not exist in the world outside at all. What is seen as “reality” is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body’s eyes to find it. The body’s eyes will never see except through differences. Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. Only the mind evaluates their messages, and so only the mind is responsible for seeing. It alone decides whether what is seen is real or illusory, desirable or undesirable, pleasurable or painful.
Journal
As my eyes show me the world, I see nothing but differences. For instance, people are different colors. But what does that mean? It could mean anything or nothing. It could mean that I find it delightful to see these various shades of color, much in the way I love planting different flowers of many colors. Someone else might see different skin tones as threatening, not like them and so that person might be uncomfortable around so much variety. Someone else could have no feelings about it at all.
What it means is up to the one looking. We decide with our mind what it means and then the world seems to show it to us according to our desire. I think it would be a very distressing way to live if I felt threatened by everything that wasn’t like me. I also think that I would find the proof I was looking for if I believed that people of different color or cultures or countries were threatening. I would find that proof, not because it was inherently true, but because I put it there.
I put it there with my beliefs. The eyes don’t really see at all, they simply report to us what we want to be there. Things in the world do not have meaning except as we give it meaning. Our mind evaluates and the message and so only the mind is responsible for seeing. I can change my mind about what I want to see and I will start seeing differently. I wonder what it would be like to see through the eyes of Christ, to see what is truly there. Of course, the eyes can’t show me this, but my mind can.
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