Appearances and Their Nature
Strangers, friends, enemies, objects of attraction and repulsion flow around you, isn’t that so? All events, objects, humans, or other forms of living beings encountered appear differently than their actual nature. Inner events, ideas, and concepts cannot behave in accordance with the way they actually exist because conflicting perceptions are holding them in a distorted form. Appearances arise within and around you due to karma and when interactions with them are confused, there will develop a kind of fantasy relationship with self and other that feels normal. This is the difficult part; the mind is conflicted, and yet it is the mind that is used to understand that it is conflicted. The raw honesty needed is rare, because a feeling of being normal acts as a stabilizing force, which now holds the mind to the distorted state. In that way, the ordinary mind continues to identify with the problem, but with sincere practice, you will begin to feel as though you and the problem have separat...