Some things are simply too easy to say. Consciousness is like a form of living light that minds make. When it shines upon itself, in sleep, worlds emerge from this. Worlds of relation, wonder… mystery… and crucial ambiguity. The waking mind shapes and directs this light according to habits and concerns. The result resembles half a flashlight, in that one quickly becomes unaware that one is ‘shining’ anything at all.

To compose this statement I shined this light upon its origins, and immediately realized that what emerges to my mind is determined by how and for what purposes I »direct and shape the light of my consciousness. And although I can understand this, I cannot truly realize it … yet. I can notice it, but this does not yet liberate me from the layers of habits and confusions I have formed over the span of my life.

We do direct our gaze, and the spirit with which it reaches toward our experiences. But our minds are much more like this; they derive almost exactly what they ‘wanted’ to see. This quickly becomes a rather sophisticated mess, since, unaware of this, we instead act and think as if we are seeing not what we went looking for… but ‘what is obviously there’.