we see what we're looking for

exploring the tree, originally uploaded by emdot.

"The Buddhist meditation masters know how flexible and workable the mind is. If we train it, anything is possible. In fact, we are already perfectly trained by and for samsara, trained to get jealous, trained to grasp, trained to be anxious and sad and desperate and greedy, trained to react angrily to whatever provokes us. In fact, we are trained to such an extent that these negative emotions rise spontaneously, without our even trying to generate them.

"So everything is a question of training and the power of habit. Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we’re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, the mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity."

— Sogyal Rinpoche

I find that one so true. We see what we are trained to see. We see what we are looking out for.

I did this little experience the other day. I closed my mind and I just thought of the color red for about 20 seconds. Do it. Try it now. Close your eyes and think of red red red.

{count to 20 in your mind}

Now, open your eyes and what do you see? $10 says you are noticing all the red bits around you. Things you probably never noticed were red. You'll see the red popping out of the littlest things. There it is. There it is. There it is.

I love how goofy life is. And how we all take it so dang darn seriously.