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Chapter 6 - Learning to See For Ourselves

Let every eye negotiate for itself, and trust no agent.

William Shakespeare

Recently, I asked my son to join me in our kitchen for a little game2. I placed six objects on the table. A mobile phone, a comb, a pen, a paper clip, a dime and a plastic coffee cup. I quickly moved the mobile phone, comb, coffee cup and pen into one pile and the other items into another.

"I have placed these items in two different categories," I told him. Can you tell me what they are?"

Zachary shook his head.

"These are made out of plastic," I said pointing to the first pile, "and the others aren't."

He smiled and nodded his head. I then rearranged the items into two new groups and asked him, "Now what are the categories?"

After a moment he said, "Things made with metal and things that aren't?"

"Right. Now you put them in two categories and I'll guess what they are."

He must have grouped the items into about ten different categories in ten minutes. He grouped them into things you find in an office and things you don't,

This exercise is from the excellent book Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa

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things you can roll on the table and things you can't, etc. He was having a blast trying to stump me, which he did often.

"Let's make this more interesting," I said. "Let's try three groups instead of two. Divide them into things made out of metal, things made out of plastic and things you'd find in an office."

He placed the dime and paper clip into one pile, the reached for the phone and pen when he suddenly stopped.

"This doesn't make sense," he said. Does the pen belong with things made of plastic or things you'd find in an office? And what about the paper clip? Is it metal or does it belong in an office?"

"Why do they have to belong to one group or the other?" I asked.

"Because that's the way the game works. They can't belong to both."

"Why?" I asked him. "Because they can't or because your categories won't allow them to?"

"Let's just go back to two categories," he said. "That's more fun."

I used this game to teach him there is often more to what we see before us than what we actually see before us. I wanted to give him a sense of the total blindness our own assumptions can cause without our ever being aware of what happened. I wanted to introduce him to the advantages of questioning his own assumptions about the world. In other words, I wanted to introduce him to the power of doubt.

As we finished playing the game, I realized that a screw was loose in the chair I was sitting in. I asked Zachary if he had a screwdriver I could use to fix the chair. He said he didn't. I asked him if he was sure. He assured me he didn't. I promptly reached across the table, picked up the dime and used it to tighten the loose screw. He sat with a stunned look on his face.

"Why didn't I see that," he asked me.

"Because you knew that a dime wasn't a screwdriver and your knowing became your reality."

In the movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas, the main character, Jack Skellington, the leader of Halloween Town, is depressed about the monotony in his life and decides to go for a walk. He stumbles upon a strange placed called Christmas Town. In order to make sense of all the odd things around him, he jumps from object to object asking himself, what's this? He ponders the snowflakes and mistletoe, the laughter and singing. Soon his enthusiasm for life is rekindled. And what caused this sudden change? The discovery of a new world.

The discovery and exploration of the unknown is one of the greatest joys in life. The moment the unknown becomes known, we begin to look elsewhere and dream of meeting new people, of seeing new places and of learning new things. This cycle never ends. Discovery and exploration are in our nature. But then, so is blindness. Not blindness of the eye, but blindness of the mind.

On the table beside me is a large paper clip. Until this moment, it wasn't there. My awareness of it brought it into reality. Not actual reality of course. It surely existed prior to my noticing it, but it didn't exist to me. So now I sit typing at my computer with a paper clip beside me. If I stop here, soon the paper clip will recede from my awareness and cease to exist. My temptation is to do just that. Ignore the paper clip and move on in search of more exciting things. But I don't. Not this time. I pick up the paper clip and ask, what's this? It is a thin, twisted piece of metal. Again. What's this? It’s a money clip. Again. If I straighten it out, it is a lock pick. It is a small back scratcher. It is a fingernail cleaner. It is all this and more. But only if I recognize this as so. As long as I see it as only a paper clip, that is all it will ever be.

And from our earliest days, this is exactly how we’re encouraged to think – each thing has a “correct” identity and it is our job to learn, from others of course, what that identity is. And it is frightening how well we do our job.

Not long ago, my children and I were running some errands and they grew restless in the backset of our car. To help pass the time we began to play a little game. Each of us would select an object in the car and then ask the others what else that object could be. We quizzed each other on my travel coffee mug, a bottle of sunscreen, the console of the car and finally my mobile phone. In a matter of minutes my phone became, among other things, a paperweight, a light reflector, a hot potato, a baby toy, and a very small umbrella. When they felt they had exhausted the possibilities, I asked them one additional question.

"Now that we know all the things it could be, what is it really?"

Without delay, they explained to me that it was really a mobile phone, but it could be a paperweight, a reflector, etc.

"How do you know that?" I asked them.

"Because that's what it is," my son said. "It is a phone. We're only pretending it could be those other things."

"How do you know it isn't really a paper weight, but we just use it as a phone?"

"Because it isn't. It's a phone."

So despite all their efforts to generate new possibilities, they were convinced that their newfound options were only imaginary, while their initial classifications were real. The coffee mug was really a coffee mug and not something else because that's what it was. A coffee mug. They were unable to see that it was only a coffee mug because that is how we chose to use it and not due to some arbiter of identity. It would be just as valid to stick a handful of pens and pencils in it and call it a pencil holder or plant a daisy in it and call it a flowerpot. Of course, being children, we can't expect them to be able to understand their mistake. It takes an adult mind to recognize such faulty reasoning and avoid being victimized by it. But, if that's the case, why don't we?

A couple of years ago I bought a car I had wanted since high school. A red, convertible, Mustang GT. It was the car of my dreams and I treated it accordingly. I kept it washed and waxed. I forbade my children from eating in the backseat. And whenever I parked it, I parked it as far as possible from other cars so that its doors wouldn't get dinged. It was my baby and I wasn't going to let anything happen to it. One day I realized how obsessed I had become and told my wife how silly I felt spending so much time and energy worrying about "a car." In that instant my Mustang was transformed from a "dream car" to just a "car." I suddenly felt better about myself and actually enjoyed the vehicle more since it wasn't demanding so much of my attention. Ah, the joy of being enlightened. But, then it happened.

As my wife and I left the grocery store one day I saw a shopping cart jammed up against my car door. I ran to inspect the damage. There was a four-inch-long crease where the cart had hit the door. That was all it took. What was moments ago "just a car” somehow transformed back into my "dream car" and I went ballistic. You name the profanity and I uttered it. My wife tried to calm me down by reminding me that I myself had said it was "just a car." How dare she throw that back in my face! Didn't she understand what was happening? Someone had damaged the car of my dreams and she didn't even care. If she had only understood the "reality" of the situation she wouldn't have taken it so lightly.

And what was the "reality" that she didn't understand? That despite the fact I once thought of my Mustang as "just a car," I didn’t' really believe that. To me, that was just one way of seeing it. It wasn’t the right way.

Imagine I am your arts and crafts instructor and I give you your first assignment. You are to make a decorative ashtray for a friend. After hours of molding, baking and painting you produce a beautiful work of art. You send it to your friend and cross your fingers in hopes she likes it. She does. You receive a gracious thank you note and an invitation to her house for dinner. When you arrive, you make a quick visit to the restroom where you are horrified to see your ashtray being used as a soap dish. How foolish of your friend not to see your gift in “the right way.” You consider pointing out the problem, but decide against it. No sense in making her feel stupid and hurting her feelings. If she wants to treat an ashtray like a soap dish, that's her business and not yours. But soon, things go from bad to worse.

It turns out your friend loved your gift more than you knew and decided to mass market it to the world. Before you know it, thousands have been sold and people everywhere are now mistakenly using ashtrays as soap dishes. It’s amazing how easily one misconception can turn so many people into fools.

Ludicrous? Of course it is. Anyone can see that your gift isn't really an ashtray, but simply a baked, bowl-shaped, painted piece of clay that can be used in any number of ways. As an ashtray, a soap dish, a drink coaster, a paperweight, a decoration, etc. And the fact that someone uses it in a certain way doesn't automatically turn the object into any particular thing. For example, using a baked, bowl-shaped, painted piece of clay as a paperweight doesn't actually turn it into a paperweight. The object hasn't changed. Only our use of it has. From here it should be clear we could apply this same logic to any object in the universe. Our seeing an object as something doesn't turn it into that particular something. Our seeing a person in a particular way doesn't make that person that way. And our seeing the circumstances of life in a particular way doesn't make them that way. Only fools would think otherwise. Unfortunately, our world is filled with fools.

When we see friends acting in ways that don't fit our image of them we ask, "Who do they think they are?" Why? Because we "know" who they are. They are the way we have them pegged. When we meet people who are members of an opposing political party we "know" what they are. They're bleeding heart liberals or radical right-wingers. When we figure out who are enemies are, they will never fool us again. They may "pretend" to change and seek to make amends, but we "know" they aren't sincere. How? Because they are our enemies and enemies don't act that way. And when we look at the circumstances of our own lives, we may realize there are other ways of viewing them, but no matter what, these other ways are never quite as valid as those we have come to "know" are true.

If we are to reclaim the power to change our lives, it isn't enough for us to generate new ways of seeing things. We must also destroy our automatic and unquestioned confidence that we have correctly identified the things in our lives. It isn’t that we should reject outright the way we have identified the things in our lives, but rather, we should keep the possibility of new identities open.

We don’t need to travel to new lands, meet new people or seek out new ideas to transform our experience of life. There is more to the world around us than we can ever know. But to discover it we must continually hammer against the illusions around us, no matter how real they appear until their façade cracks and true possibility takes its place.

Harnessing the True Power of Enlightenment

Seeing through the hallucinations of our everyday lives is effortless to a man when he is in a state of enlightenment. He cannot imagine ever again being fooled by the house of mirrors he sees before him. But soon, as his detachment slips away, so does his objectivity. His house of mirrors becomes brick and mortar and he gets trapped inside. Though his only true chance of escape is for him to see through the illusion, this isn't yet a possibility. He is too busy looking for the "logical" way out. He must find a key to the door, jar the window loose, or get someone on the outside to let him out. Why doesn't he simply remember it is all an illusion and be done with it? Because he has the same problem the rest of us do – when he isn’t experiencing enlightenment, his world looks and feels so real to him that there is no room or time for doubt to grow. He acts on what he "knows" to be true before he ever finds out if it really is.

Imagine crossing a busy street and suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you see a car about to hit you. Do you stop to ask yourself if it is real before jumping out of the way or do you just jump? You jump, but why? Why didn't you take just a moment to question the "reality" of the situation? Because one doesn't question reality bearing down. One gets out of its way.

Certainly there are times when it is appropriate to accept your initial assessment of things and simply react. But these times are the exception and life typically affords us the opportunity to evaluate our circumstances before we act. Unfortunately, we rarely take advantage of the opportunity, not because of the urgency of life, but because of our instinctive and unconscious acceptance of our interpretations of reality as undeniable truth. Our interpretations and assumptions are as real to us as a speeding car and it never occurs to us to question them. But this is where the enlightened man differs from his unenlightened counterpart; every so often, it does occur to the enlightened man to question the nature of “reality.” Thus, the true power of enlightenment is not in striving to reach and maintain an impossible state of higher awareness, but in questioning our way out of the illusions of daily life.

Whereas much self-help literature encourages us to rely on instinct and intuition, these are almost certain ways of guaranteeing we will never become enlightened. Why? Because our instincts and intuitions have become little more than conditioned responses that serve those who taught us how to respond. Rather than live life through instinct and intuition, the enlightened man strives to live a
life of insight. And insight isn’t automatic. It is the result of a relentless questioning of those things in life that do not serve him.

Here are three questions that can push us in the right direction:

What else could it be? What else could it mean? What else is happening?

These questions can break the hold of our current beliefs so that adopting new ones can become a true possibility. However, these questions are not encouraged in normal social circles because they can lead to the rejection of social norms.

These questions are deceptively simple. Unlike Zen koans they appear to be easily answered. They are not – at least not definitively. When you ask them repeatedly, you will begin to get a sense of this. The “answers” will just keep coming and coming. This is not just a sign of their difficulty. It is also a sign you are heading in the right direction.

People who refuse to blindly accept a view of “reality” that is handed to them by teachers, leaders, parents and gurus are dangerous people indeed. How can those who wish to control us do so if our behavior isn’t based on a fixed, and thus predictable, model of thinking? They can’t. And they know it.

Years ago, a friend of mine unexpectedly became involved with an obscure, but devout religious organization. Within a few short weeks, his behavior became rather bizarre and soon he had alienated virtually everyone who knew him prior to his conversion. If he couldn’t recruit someone into his new organization he would turn around and viscously condemn them. Not being one to get involved in such groups, I soon became one of his worst enemies. I recall one particular encounter quite well.

After a rather bitter exchange over the validity of his new beliefs, I asked him a question that horrified him beyond description.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” I said. “Maybe everything you now believe is true and everything I believe is wrong. I don’t think so, but I will at least admit to you that it is possible. Can you say the same thing to me?”

I knew the conversation was over as he stood up, collected his papers and started to leave. When he reached the door he turned and said, “Never.”

It took over a year before we discussed our religious beliefs again, because that’s how long it took him to break away from the group that had held him so tightly in its grasp.

Later, when I asked him about the conversation I just described, he told me that he had been warned that people would try to instill doubt in his mind. He had been told that people who did so didn’t have his best interests in mind and couldn’t be trusted. By asking him to at least admit that there was a possibility, however small, that he could have been wrong, I became his enemy.

In a world built on illusion, there is little room for doubt.

This lesson, if we are to learn it at all, must be learned outside the scope of the social circles we find ourselves in every day. They cannot teach it as it threatens their very existence. This is true not just of religious cults, but also of any social organization. The stronger its members’ faith is, the stronger the group is. And the introduction of any doubt, however small, is the first step in the weakening of faith.

I am not making a case against social institutions in general. Our society clearly couldn’t function without them and they often make our lives worth living. Yes, we often need our churches, companies, clubs, families and other social organizations almost as much as we need food, air and water. But when our participation in them becomes detrimental to us as individuals, what are we to do then? Blindly serve the organization? Or do we begin to think for ourselves and question whether or not we wish to remain a part of it?

Doubt is the key to enlightenment and to adopt this mindset is to begin to find your own way in life.

At this point a word of warning is in order: don’t expect anyone to congratulate you on learning this material. Understanding and practicing it can indeed help set you free from the psychological traps that hold you in place. But to those who benefit from you being in your current state, this is a direct threat to their understanding of reality. And threats are not taken lightly.

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else’s.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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