Seeing Versus Merging

There are two ways not to perceive something, and they are quite different…

The first way is to be blind to it, meaning to look without seeing.

The second is to merge with it, meaning there is no need to look.

Let’s give an example. Let’s say that “something” is love.

Some people are blind to love. For whatever reason, they look for it everywhere but can’t seem to find it… Usually because what they’re actually looking for isn’t actually love, but a very particular type of ego boost or role play — which ends up further consolidating their aloneness.

Other people are so in love that they no longer need to look. Love permeates their being to such a degree that they experience life as love — with love. They are felt as love. They speak as love. To look at — or for — love, would make no sense for someone who is inseparable from it.

Or a particularly interesting example, which illustrates the spectrum between being blind to an aspect of experience versus merging with it: breathing.

Everyone breathes, right? And we all know know we rely on it. Some of us pay little to no attention to the breath (or our bodies, for that matter) until we literally can’t breathe. An extreme example is being practically blind to the experiential reality, until the lack of ability to breathe smacks them in the face (near drowning, or panic attack, maybe).

Others (perhaps a few people reading this) are aware of the breath and practice connecting with it. Those of us at this level will sometimes notice when the breath is laboured and make efforts to breathe more slowly and deeply, perhaps with less tension throughout the shoulders and trunk muscles. At this level there is a need to constantly check in and self-monitor.

And then there is merging. Rather than looking at the breath, the experience is one of feeling as the breath. Though it may have required conscious efforts to set the groundwork for this, the actual connection is a result of releasing the effort of looking in order to unify with the breath. At this point, there is no subject (the “I” observing) or object (the breath) but instead, a subject-object fusion (maybe we can call it being-breathing, but the actual experience cannot be thought about — only experienced directly).

Naturally, no matter the topic (love, breathing, whatever) we seem to fluctuate between states of being. And these experiences exist on a spectrum, not as absolutes — although the reality may be more complex than a spectrum if we inquire more deeply. The point is, by creating the space and time for a level of stillness and silence, we can notice what is occurring and gradually spend more time in merged states.

When enough time is spent in higher states of understanding or functioning, there is potential to consolidate that state as a stage. A stage is a new baseline, where we can’t “unsee” or “unintegrate” what we’ve experienced.

An interesting question: how can we progress beyond reasonably functional states which require effort, to incredibly functional states which require little effort?