Coming Out of the Picture World

By Neal

The Picture Prison

Once again as in my last article, “Beyond Boundaries”, I was inspired by a Native American perspective. Many Native American cultures held spiritual beliefs about the soul or spirit being captured or trapped in photographs. For this reason, many would not let themselves be photographed. Not understanding the principle of how the image got on the film, you could see how they could imagine such things. But there is some truth to that fear of pictures trapping your soul or more accurately trapping your life.

After all, once a picture is taken, that moment of your life is trapped in that picture, the way you looked, the way you felt, and so on. As time goes by, whether it’s the next hour or years later, you are no longer the same. Yet that image trapped in the picture remains the same.

This is not a problem for pictures we take with a camera. We can store them in our phones or computers or put them in a photo album, looking at them once in a while. But the overwhelming number of pictures we take are not with a camera, but with our five senses and feelings. As we experience the world, we take these mental photographs and instead of putting them in a folder or album we store them in our minds.

These images in our mind have the power that the Native Americans feared, the power to trap life in the pictures. Images of ourselves, others and the world all get frozen in those pictures. They have this power because once we take each snapshot, like the picture in a camera, it doesn’t change. The person we took a picture of, the world and ourselves may change in real life, but in the mental image they remain the same. As we take more and more pictures of the world and ourselves, our perceptions and conceptions become trapped in those fixed impressions. Though everything is constantly changing, we remain in that world of pictures that doesn’t change.

Living in Fixed Images

For example: suppose you start a new job and your boss does not have much patience for you to learn the job, making you feel uncomfortable and a bit nervous. For those first few weeks at work, you take many pictures of his impatience, criticisms and your own feelings of uneasiness.

Months or even years later you may still feel uncomfortable around your boss, even though you have become proficient at your job and he is not impatient with you anymore. The reason is that you already took those pictures of him being impatient. Even if he no longer is, you still worry about seeing that impatience. Rather than give up your pictures, you’ll even pick out those times when he is confirming the images you hold, even if those times are rare. You trapped your boss and the feelings you have about him in those pictures.

Think about when you gather with family for the holidays. Often before we even see our family members we are already anticipating what the experience will be like based on what we are holding in our minds. As a result we are already blocking the reality of now and may not even notice any changes in others because we are only looking at the picture of them that we hold in our mind.

Another example is growing up. As we grow and our minds and ideas change we are often bothered by our parents that still hold so many images of our younger selves. We feel almost as if they don’t know us or they don’t value our opinions.

We have many examples of this relating to ourselves. Think of times when you were young, when you might have been criticized or complemented.  Growing up we often compare ourselves to others and hold pictures in our minds from those comparisons. Thoughts like I’m not smart or pretty or any number of conclusions we came to. This freezing life in pictures applies to everything in life, and in all our relationships with friends, romance, spouses, parents, children and ourselves. Once we trap ourselves or someone else in a picture, it can be hard for our ideas and perceptions to change along with life as it is changing. A part of us would rather stay safe in our pictures than experience the unknown.. We would rather have the certainty of the picture than be open to the changes that come with life. It’s a kind of protection but it blocks us from experiencing life.

Trapped in Our Own Selfies

As much as we take pictures of the world, the images we mostly take are selfies. We trap ourselves in these selfies and see ourselves according to these pictures. We form an identity out of these pictures of ourselves and remain stuck in that identity.

We become imprisoned with our beliefs and conceptions of the world, our ideas about ourselves, insecurities, limitations, superiority, inferiority and so many more things that we concluded from our collection of mental photographs. This collage of pictures becomes our identity, the sense of who we are. We carry it like a suit of armor to protect us against the changing nature of reality. It’s an image to insulate us, a place we feel familiar and comfortable.

Most of our peering out at reality is to compare how well our pictures look to other people. Which pictures we share with them and which ones we don’t share. We are happy when we agree and not happy when we disagree. This leads us to comparing ourselves to others and countless judgements about ourselves and others. We basically imprison ourselves in the conceptions and judgements we hold about ourselves and others. When you look at it from the point of view of our lives, for our whole life we never experience life beyond that collection of pictures that we define ourselves with. Though life itself is an eternal, ever changing experience, all we know is the world of those pictures that cannot capture life as it is, or realize its eternal nature.

Breaking Free

There is a way however to break out of that prison that we created. A way to come out of that world of pictures and into the living real world. The meditation method we talk about here at Online Meditation Events is a start. It is a method where we look at these pictures one by one and discard them. This begins to put a gap between us and that picture world.

The more we do it the wider the gap gets, allowing us to see our life beyond that world of pictures. As we continue, we begin to see the flimsy origin of so many of our ideas about ourselves, the world and others, it becomes easier and easier to let these conceptions go. Little by little we dismantle the suit of armor that we built around ourselves. As we do, we begin to experience life as it is. We join the flow of life without resisting its changes.

We no longer have to defend or protect ourselves because we can accept and be at peace with ourselves as we are, we don’t have to live up to a picture of ourselves or anybody else’s pictures of us. We can realize that we are part of a bigger reality beyond anything we can imagine or have a picture of. Ultimately when we are really ready to let go of that old world, things like comparison and judgement are replaced with acceptance, appreciation and love. We begin to feel love and appreciation for others and all of creation because we realize that my own deepest nature is the same in all.

Discovering Universal Love

No two people have the same pictures in their minds. The more our pictures match the closer we feel to each other. We can feel isolated and lonely living in those pictures because we hold pictures of people that are no longer here, pictures of how we think or wish life should be, how others should be, how we should be. Seeing things from this perspective it’s hard to feel like anyone else could share or understand our feelings. Once we are not bound by those pictures we can see and feel the commonality of all people and we can appreciate others regardless of how they agree or disagree with us, as well as appreciate ourselves as we are. This leads to freedom from self-consciousness and judgements of ourselves and others and ultimately to a feeling of empathy, love and appreciation.

When we think of love from the point of view of the self we created from pictures, it’s very different. We often think of relationships as how it adds to or benefits me and how it validates my view of the world or my image. When we are free of that picture of the self, love is automatic, not requiring any conditions.

You will also find that love is the very force of creation. Just as human or animal parents  automatically love their babies, taking care of all their needs, and babies automatically love parents, that love is everywhere. You can see that the whole world is designed to take care of you. It is in the sun shining on the leaves, in the leaves releasing oxygen into the air, the bacteria giving life to the soil, your lungs breathing in and the heart pumping oxygen and nutrition to every cell. Then every cell and organ takes care of the body in its unique way, and on and on. Ask yourself, why are all these things happening? We tend to think that all of these things that happen in our body and in nature are coincidences that go on robotically. If you really look at all of it, you’ll see that there is consciousness in every action and the best way we can describe that consciousness is love.

How can anyone feel isolated or alone, when they are so loved? It’s only that world of pictures that can make us feel isolated and lonely by separating you from the experience of flowing life. So, give this meditation a try, step out of that world of pictures, and see the world as it is. You will be surprised. It takes time and a willingness to let that world of pictures go but it is actually the most important thing anyone can do.