What Are You Looking Out Of?

“And we spectators, always looking at things, never out of something. Who’s turned us around like that?”–Rainer Maria Rilke

“We are always looking AT things. What the blazes are we looking OUT OF?” –Douglas Harding

What’s so powerful about these questions from Rilke and Harding is that you can actually “get it” instantly. No explanations, philosophies, theories, and so on–just direct realization.

Of course, these questions, these natural-born koans, must actually be faced, and the looking, the sensing, in two directions at the same time must actually be tried.

So here it is in the simplest terms possible. As you look at the butterfly (click on it to enlarge it), what are you looking out of? Take a good look. No answers needed, nor do they help. Just the actual experience, whatever it is, of what you are looking out of as you are looking at the butterfly (or anything). It’s almost too simple for the mind, but it is possible.

As you try this, do you feel like you’ve been busted wide open? No? Then try again. And again. Eventually–and suddenly–the turnabout, the openness, the recognition of who or what is looking!

This is not a trick. It is not a game. It is a way of living in the light of truth.

“Who am I?”

Copyright 2010-14 by Dennis Lewis.