Thoughts on a cloudy day

Come with me on a journey, let's do a small exercise together. If you are not near an open window, after you read this move to a window. If it's night wherever you are, no problem, just make small adjustments in your thinking :) now that's easy, isn't it?

Ok, now look out towards the sky. Hopefully, you will be able to see a patch of sky, blue, or grey or black or white with clouds. If there are clouds, watch them for a while, observe how they shift and move, sometimes imperceptibly, but move they do, they change shape, get fatter and denser or dissipate into wisps of mist. It is very calming and soothing. Watch them for a while. Notice their impermanence, their shifting, moving quality. Our troubles are like that, blocking out the sun, clouding our vision, sometimes getting fatter and more dense and engulfing us completely while we flap around like a drowning person, trying to find the light. But all we need to do is make a slight shift in our perspective and tell ourselves, 'this too will pass', this is 'annicca' like the Buddhists call it. This is impermanent. This will shift and move and pass away. If we remain calm and detached, troubles are like clouds, they swirl around us but eventually they move on.

If the clouds have passed, notice the sky, its colour. Blue. Scientists tell us that the colour is the result of the scattering of sunlight. I have noticed that the sunlight that you experience in places that are closer to the equator have a more yellow quality and the sunlight in places further away from the Equator is more blue-tinged. But how can that be? Pure light is white, so what explains the colour? Let's look at the concept of colour. Our eyes see everything around us as having some colour, or white or black. The names of the colours are labels that humans have given to colours to communicate better, for I do not think that honeybees say to themselves, "oh look! A RED flower!" Again science tells us that colours result when the light that strikes a surface reflects on to our eyes after the rest of the spectrum has been absorbed by the object. So when light falls on a plant, the plant absorbs all the rays of light except the green part which get picked up by our eyes. So colour just like shape, texture, solidity are just the perception of our senses.

Look at the blue sky more closely. It almost looks solid. Like an inverted blue bowl. Nothing else is visible unless the moon has risen during the day or you might see passing birds or planes. But we know that there is only air up there, it is not solid. Beyond the blueness, unseen by us, there are planets, stars, galaxies, supernovas. See them all in your mind's eye, stretched out to infinity, expand your consciousness outward to meet them, outwards in all directions. Feel the vastness within you, flowing out from you, feel the disappearance of boundaries. Your body is the experience of the senses, like colours, like solidity, feel it become light and unburdensome. There is nothing to fear at all, everything is light and love in the Universe, feel the lightness and the love. Unhindered by the senses, feel the oneness with all creation. This is our natural state.

And yes, things are not what they appear to be. It's all a matter of perception and you can alter your reality by changing your perspective.

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