perception – סלומה

The Wonder Spot was a popular Wisconsin tourist attraction that was open from 1949 until 2006 before being demolished. It featured a small cabin at the edge of a ravine and was advertised as “a place where the normal rules of gravity do not apply”. Sure enough, if you were to travel to The Wonder Spot, you’d find it impossible to stand up straight. Water ran backwards and in strange, swirling motions and it was possible to balance chairs and tables on two legs. It was very difficult to walk properly, as you would be met with a strange weightless feeling, as if you were walking on the moon. This story is certainly freaky and there aren’t many definite explanations for this strange phenomena. Tour guides merely attributed the lack of gravity to igneous rock formations, which makes it even more fascinating.

The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.

Marcel Proust

“I’m perfectly prepared to believe that the world is not only more
complicated than we know but than it is ever possible for us to know,
simply because we are limited as human beings by the capacities of our
sense organs. There could be incredible visual phenomena actually
occurring in this room right now which you and I simply can’t see—no
doubt they are occurring—because our retinas are only capable of
responding to a very short portion of the spectrum of light. The room
could be filled with angels, you know, dancing nude—and we wouldn’t know
it.”

Reynolds Price, from Conversations with Reynolds Price, ed. Jefferson Humpheries (University Press of Mississippi, 1991)

People act according to the way they experience the world. If you can understand their experience, you can understand their behavior.

R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

When someone tells you, ‘I love you,’ and then you feel, ‘Oh, I must be worthy after all,’ that’s an illusion. That’s not true. Or someone says, ‘I hate you,’ and you think, ‘Oh, God, I knew it; I’m not very worthy,’ that’s not true either. Neither one of these thoughts hold any intrinsic reality. They are an overlay. When someone says, ‘I love you,’ he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, ‘I hate you,’ she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views—literally.

Adyashanti