Red Field

Seeing red

There is a field between thought and stimulus, and there is a method of understanding that comes from this nexus. I am referring to the field which is the seat of intuition, presence, experience and embodiment. For example, I could read all the books about the anatomy of the eye, the physics of light and color psychology… but if I were blind, I still wouldn’t understand what red looks like. Despite knowing its mechanical content, I would have never experienced red nor its interactions with other colors.

So if I were to gain sight and see red, the understanding would be instantaneous. The mechanical process of thought, which took time and energy like a machine learning algorithm, failed to achieve what could be done instantly by simply looking.

With that in mind, if I look at myself, it means I can intuitively begin to understand myself. Through meditation, I might find myself silently sitting with my fleeting thoughts and emotions. As I sit facing the wall, I turn inward and simply look at my sorrow, greed, joy, emptiness… I see all of my regret and all of the trauma passed down through generations.

In my day-to-day life, I can look at the world intuitively and understand the people I spend time with, and the society that I live in. By being mindful, perhaps I can gravitate towards an utterly simplistic state of mind, a timeless state of sheer intuition, and live with a mind unfazed by deleterious time. I simply look and see the callousness of everyday life, which is always fostering our aggrandizement and aggravation rather than nurturing our creativity and curiosity.

What would happen to the mind living a life of mere observation? What happens when we truly begin to see things for what they actually are, both within and without? There would be silence and understanding, because if you’re truly listening, you’re not talking. You would experience unspeakable serenity.

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