Chapter 16: Sixth Purple Bingus

It is infinitely easier to describe how you think things "ought to be." It is almost impossible to describe things "as they really are."

We humans almost never get to see things, as they are. We usually only see the world, as it seems to us.

If we could see things for what they really are, it would be a more profound experience than any personal experience we've ever had, any emotion we've ever felt, any religious belief we've ever held, or anything we could ever imagine.

"Things as they truly are," is such a loaded expression, and it suggests something obscure or religious, but we actually mean "things" as they ACTUALLY are, not how they seem, or appear to our perceptual apparatus. It sounds profound, because we are talking about the very nature of existence, but "the nature of existence" is the simplest thing of all. It's the one thing that cannot be explained simply because it doesn't have to be.

At best, people are able to catch glimpses of Actuality (aka. things as they truly are). This is not because Actuality is hard to find or understand; rather it is because the human mind has a tendency to over-complicate things. Actuality is of the utmost simplicity, and our detail-obsessed mind cannot step back and see the forest from the trees, so to speak.

It is to realize that we are truly part of an infinitely larger whole.

It is that we live on a planet that floats among the cosmos; an unfathomable region of energy and unknowable potential.

In this vast ocean of happenstance we find ourself. A small, confused organism. And we experience.

It's not hard to see. But it's even easier to ignore. Some people will be gifted with glimpses, and others may never see, but it will always and has always been available forever to everyone.