#11 of 30 – Black and White

Another blog post in this series responding to a random list of titles…

We used to see the world in black and white whenever we looked at the TV screen or at a photo. That was the interpretation of the world that was familiar to us…

…and there is still a beautiful authenticity in the black and white photograph. It’s a painting of the reality that it depicts, because it is not that reality at all. It is something different.

That thought brings an understanding that all reality is an illusion. It is not what it seems. That view in the photo that comes with this piece of writing: it didn’t look like that. And then, I didn’t look the way I thought I did either. That moment, when we look into the mirror and see an “I” staring back at us which is a complete stranger, not the image that we hold in our head. Displacing, unsettling and scary.

Just a slight adjustment of a photo, any photo, and we are looking at yet another version of reality, something else, another illusion. Where and what is reality? Is the only ‘reality’ that is reliable, the one that passes for our mind-stream, our thoughts. Alive in the moment – awake to what is.