Nietzsche's abyss, not thinking about it and the human mirror

It was Nietzsche who said that when you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back into you.

Whatever!
and I'm, a smart person because I just (mis)quoted Nietzsche, but anyway ...

It goes deeper than that; If you want to understand the true nature of a thing, you have to look at it; when you do, when you really do this, you become a "mirror", and whatever you look at, will cast it's reflection on your inner world.

It's difficult to do this though, because nobody knows how to really see what they look at.

You can see this applied in sitting zen (as well as other forms of meditation), in photography and listening to music and many others domains.

And the key problem is looking.

Try to go for 'understanding what you look at', and you missed it.
Try to go for noticing and you missed it again.
Try to offer a smile to the person you looked at and you missed it the third time.
Try to rationalize it, to think about what you are doing and you missed it yet again.

Even doing nothing but trying to hard will make you miss the experience.

Infact, whatever you try to achieve while looking, is going to lead you astray, because your experience shifts from looking to trying-to-accomplish-something-while-looking.


The first thing to know about this fenomenon is how to look.

The second thing is, that you are allways looking, even when you're not trying to; Especially when you're not paying attention.

The third one is that what you focus on is not really what you're looking at, because what you actually receive is never on the surface.


Listen to too much romantic music for example, and the actual message you get from it (what you're actually looking at), is that you are incomplete without another there to complete you, which leads to love-sickness.

Watch too many violent news and you will come to the "feeling" that the world is a violent place.

Watch the "nothingness" of a white wall and your being will become filled with nothingness (one of the strongest forms of inner peace); This is called zazen by the way.



This is the key to true understanding, to knowing from experience and when you do this you "know". It is niether intuition, nor thinking, nor logic.

It is also the fastest way to come to a place of knowing, because it is never wrong and it has no limit.
But for that, you have to know how to look.