If you love your thoughts, you love life.
– Byron Katie
If I love my image of something, I love life.
I have an image of a homeless man. I find I love that image. I love life.
I have an image of myself as homeless. I notice I recoil from it, and I don’t love life in that moment.
I take time with the image, perhaps inquiring into my thoughts about what it means, and I find I love it. I again love life.
All of these images are innocent. They are innocent questions about the world.
When I recoil from them, I don’t love life. I close myself off from my awareness of love, of me as love.
And when I recoil from these images, I recoil from what the image is about, and I am really recoiling from me.
I am these images, so I recoil from me.
As usual, there is a lot more here.
Whenever I see anything in the world, what I really see is my image or images of it. Right now, I see a door. What I see is my own image of a door – I see how it’s put together, I see the trees and forest it’s made of, I see the window pane factory that made the glass, I see myself out on the balcony on the other side, I have images of cold air outside. All of these images, and many more, are there. I may not be consciously aware of most of them, and yet these images give meaning to the initial image of a door, and they create a feeling tone, they create how I feel about it. That’s how it is with my whole world. My world is, quite literally, my own world of images. That’s the world I live in. That’s the world that’s real to me (or not). That’s the world I live within, as if it’s real (until it’s not anymore).
When I love the image that’s here for me, I love the world. And since it’s all my world of images, it’s all – again quite literally – me, I love me.
Recoiling from these images, I life from fear and beliefs. Finding love for them, I live from kindness and whatever intelligence is available for me.
What’s more kind, recoiling and fear, or kindness and intelligence? What do I really want for myself?
Also, noticing my images I can find love for them. I see they are innocent, I see they are questions about the world. I see the pain I create for myself if I recoil from them. I see the kindness in finding love for them. And, I can also do it more thoroughly. I can identify the specific images, find the underlying images and assumptions, take them all to inquiry to see what I find. That’s how it all unravels, the most basic impulse to recoil from my own images.
When I say I am love, I am the images, and when I recoil from the image I recoil from me, what does it mean?
When I say I recoil from the image, what’s really here? What I find is an image (for instance of a homeless man), recoiling, an image of a me or I recoiling from it, and an image saying I recoiled from the initial image of a homeless man. It’s all happening within images. The man, recoiling, me, me recoiling from him, it’s all happening within my images.
More specifically, there is (a) an image of a homeless man, and (b) images of what it means (suffering, isolation, spite, rejection, death). There is (c) an image of a me or I, which (d) is different from a homeless man, not compatible with the image of a homeless man. These images are (e) taken as true, and there is a recoiling from it all, and there is then (f) an image tying it all together, saying I recoil from him.
Noticing this, it’s easier to see that whatever is here in my world is me. It’s all awareness. It’s all happening within and as what I am. All of these images – of a world, a me and an I, recoiling, love – it’s all what I am. When it’s here, it’s what I am.