Nothing Is As It Seems
From the Tamborine Talk, August 1990
Hold a stick in a pond and the stick appears to bend at a distinct angle. The actual end of the stick is not where it seems to be. Watch the setting sun. The sun you’re seeing on the horizon is not the sun at all. The sun itself is already below the horizon and what you are looking at is a projected image. Both illusions are due to light being refracted or bent by the medium through which the light is passing. In the case of the stick, the medium is water. In the case of the sun, the medium is the earth’s atmosphere - air plus dust. Nothing is as it seems.
A similar illusion is created when the light of consciousness passes through the medium of sense. The consciousness is bent, and a physical image of consciousness - your body - appears where the consciousness is not. So frequently you feel that you are not yourself, that you are incomplete, out of place. Or that there’s no peace or fulfilment where you are now. When you feel this depression, you’re identifying with your image and not your consciousness. You are then literally round the bend.
The reality, of course, is that you, your consciousness, is back behind the senses and is not bent at all. You are always in that straight place, no matter what position the bending of the light seems to put you in. Be still. The reality is in the feeling of yourself, not in the image of yourself; not in the imagination; not in the intellectual projection.
Do not be misled by mediums. All mediums bend the truth, whether they are water, atmosphere, sense - or the media that informs you of the news of the day.
Watch Out, There’s a Mood About