On a Spring day In 1995 not long after we had moved to live in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, I was driving along the Carretera de Guadarrama in a leisurely fashion, in no hurry but with great curiosity to about the place to which we had recently moved. As I drove along on that beautiful spring day I noticed that the plants passing by outside had an intense dark green hue to them. I idly speculated as to the cause of their dark green tone. I started to wonder if this colour could be due to the greater prevalence of ultra violet light at higher altitudes, the colour of the plants perhaps a protection from these height levels of UV light. I rapidly realised this would be unlikely to happen at 1200 metres. I then started to wonder if perhaps it was the pH of the soil, I made as I knew that soil pH can change the colours of plants, As I pondered this possibility I realised in a flash with a sense of stupidity that I was wearing my Ray Bans sunglasses with green lenses.
Until I understood the cause of my distorted perception I was unable to comprehend what I saw and as a result I could not even ask the right questions. At face value, my questions were scientific and intelligent but they were almost worse than useless.
It is the same with the distorting glasses of desire, when we see the world through the distorted lens of desire we cannot see clearly and we miss so much of what is happening. We are so absorbed with our “Me Centred Universe” and what we want; what is “good for me” that we see very little else.
When we live in this state we are easily and constantly hurt. Angered and disappointed by events which don’t go as they should as they “ought” to, events or outcomes that don’t suit us. In this state everything feels personal, like an attack on “me”. The sense of feeling always offended sense can make your headache.
So today when you notice that you are wearing these glasses, remove them. What will happen?
You will see the world as it is in all of its detail and splendour rather than the distorted fraction of the world visible through the impoverished filter of desire.
We only experience this clarity when we release our claim on what any moment “should” be, what “ought” to be and accept the moment for what it, and what it contains. Without conditions.
Take them glasses off ….They don’t suit you!!
