I once had a beginners mind. I want to reclaim it.
The awareness of that beginners mind was blinding. The world I experienced had no dimension, no form. All possibilities, all potential lay in front of me. I was for a brief time aware of everything, independent of what I now regard as space and time.
Then my neural network began to filter all that awareness, and that filtered world slowly came into a focus I could relate to. It was a lattice network that allowed me to move through that world with some understanding, however limited it was. I learned to interact with the world through this lattice and I survived.
My young life was lived behind a lattice of rules and expectations. This lattice meant that I thought I knew how to interpret the world and experience it. I never realized how much the lattice may have both protected me and seriously limited my awareness. The lattice has guided me in how I have experienced the world, how I have interpreted what I experienced, and how I was to act.
My chosen task is now to see the universe in an unfiltered manner. Perhaps not all at once, but slowly as I learn the practice of deep concentration. I am gradually penetrating the realm of the formless and undefined. I want to see without either the benefit or the limitations of the lattice that has become so much a part of my life.
I want to see reality in all its formless nature, without filters and without rules. I want to see the presence that is there beyond the forms and shapes I have learned to accept. I want to move forward without rules, not just in how I experience the world but also in how I respond to that formless world.
I am for sure changing how I am accustomed to think, and the freedom is joyful and energizing. This movement to another and distant shore is the challenge presented in the Heart Sutra.
My challenge is to experience a world with no beginning and no end, no birth and no death, no forms. My challenge is to see beyond the illusion the lattice of my life has created, to walk into Target with an awareness that goes beyond the cold pavement that rises to be touched by my feet.
I am finding that this is not just about thinking and how to think. It is beginning to feel more like not thinking at all. My whole body becomes an avenue of awareness, and there is no lattice to interpret what manifests before me. I am developing a comfort, a relaxed feeling associated with the absence of the lattice of forms.
This realm of no-lattice is not actually a new way to think, but is becoming a relaxed way of not thinking at all.