Meditations Upon Perspective and Cauliflower

Video Posted on March 20, 2014 Updated on March 20, 2014

Meditations Upon Perspective and Cauliflower
By: ZMHB

As I meditated under the rising sun this morning, I began to wonder: does it matter which direction I look? What I mean by this is should I look UP or should I look DOWN to understand the Universe?

I imagined myself as a small spider, circling around something that I had captured inside my web. As I did so, I considered the hundreds of hours I spent at my window in contemplation of this very activity as a young boy, where from spring to autumn of one incredible year I spent hours every day watching this lovely brown spider that lived on the metal bars outside my window (my bedroom was on the second story of our apartment at that time). As I watched her capture prey and then surround it with her web, I realized that my own thinking was very much the same. I marveled at how people like my youngest daughter could be so much more agile in her thinking, swooping and darting in and out of ideas like a swallow darting in and out of a chain link fence; never particularly concerning herself with the details, just the journey.

I, on the other hand, am more like the spider. I wait, and prepare, and know that should I do the correct things, the wind will bring me what I need; and the wind never fails. But should I envy my daughter’s innate ability to move in and out of esoteric concepts without really understanding the details? In the world of the spider, details are everything. In the world of the swallow, details are momentary, fleeting, and every changing. And yet both the spider and the sparrow are dependent upon the Wind for their journey through life and the esoteric.

As I considered these two perspectives, my mind drifted to the cauliflower that I was planning to steam and prepare later for lunch. My spider mind moved carefully across its ruddy and varied surface, and I realized that both large or small, it was still the same. The pattern of the cauliflowers growth is fractal. In my mind’s eye I drifted down to the surface of the cauliflower. As I stood there, taking in the illusion of variation in texture and structure of the surface, I saw the mentor of my youth stepping out of his rocket car — the car still steaming from its transit through what appeared to be a mountain — and he smiling said, “No matter where you go, there you are.”

I knew then, it didn’t matter. Small or large, up or down, the principles are the same, it is merely one’s perspective that changes, and with it we rise and we creep across the surface of consciousness, dimly aware that our transit is merely an illusion; for no matter where you go, there you are.