When we look at these letters
which we are currently reading, we cannot help but silently or
loudly, utter or take in, the sounds and meanings we have been
trained to associate with them, and their combinations (words).
Looking closer at the individual letters, like this U,
we can see it has a specific shape, which is really all it is – a
shape, or a form. A 'u' isn't a letter anywhere but in our minds.
What we see is our minds superimposed upon the form. Typographers,
designers, and visual artists, have a better chance of perceiving the
u as an image, while
most people normally never consider the pure line or curve of it. All
they see is the U.
What I'd like us to do now
is to gaze at this shape: H
until we can behold its form free from the
concept we call 'h'. To help out we may start by picturing the
silhouette of two pillars attached to each other with a thin
horizontal construction binding them together. Perhaps it is the
ruins of a once great temple? Try then to see the form completely
free from any kind of meaning (Staring at it
for a long time usually helps). If we succeed it's great, but if we
don't, the fact that we can realize that H is a form, just as
“meaningless” as any other form, is beneficial. Though we
understand it as a letter, it is still that same and simple form,
which the illiterate will confirm, if we doubt it.
We typically don't add
much emotional wrapping to the forms we call letters, but some sorts
of music, some kinds of food, some occupations, and some types of
animals (for example), are not as easily kept free from such
additions. Just like the sound added to the letter H doesn't really
have anything to do with the H-form, our opinions and ideas about
heavy metal, soup, police-men, and spiders, are just that – opinion
and ideas. Even if it's true that spiders more often bite human
beings than butterflies do, they are not nasty, disgusting, creepy,
or evil, anywhere but in some people's minds. (This is also true
about police-men.)
The emotional wrappings
may partly or fully be caused by actual facts, but hairy, poisonous
qualities don't equal fear, because if they did, all beings would
fear spiders, and loath heavy-metal. That some people love it and
others hate it (whatever “it” may be) should be enough really,
for us to see beyond our ego-centric ideas about all things.
Unfortunately, this “should be” is wishful thinking. Wrappings
don't come off that easily.
When we have managed to
look at an H, for a short moment liberated from our branding of it,
we can use this same technique on the rest of reality. Just try to
keep free from ALL ideas when entering places, and encountering
people, and you will notice how strange and marvelous a phenomenon
they truly are. Treat every moment as a new and unknown revelation,
coming to you all-inclusive and inevitable. There is nothing
we can change of what already is, but for our reception and
acceptance of it.
If we keep this up, we may
be invited into the next level of freedom, where form itself is
recognized and experienced as a concept. This is where the H
blends together with the background (which no thing can ever escape)
and starts speaking to us as the Unity it is. When that happens, we
ourselves, simultaneously blend together with the world before our
eyes and “seeing” is transformed into “being”.
An H isn't built up
singularly by dark lines, but is equally made up by the seemingly
empty areas between the pillars, as well as the space surrounding it.
It is also fully dependent on the reader, without whom, there could
never be form, nor letters. Examining an H is examining ourselves.
Let us look beyond our ideas of it. Let us take into account all that
which is required for the revelation of an H, and study that
boundless process in action. Form and consciousness is now shaking
hands, moving closer, and as they do they begin to recognize
themselves in the eyes of the other. The merger has already begun.
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