November 07, 2025

"The observer cannot be separated from the observed." Where does experience stop and projection start? We see everything from the standpoint of "the way we see things." How we see things makes things as they are. And we live in relationship with things and people as though they are the way we see them. All "objective reality" is interpreted/perceived subjectively.

So, where do the lines lie? "Not one. Not two." Say the Buddhists, but the Taoists see Yin AND Yang everywhere,
inseparably, all the time.

Our presumed separateness is presumed, not real. The "seems to be" is not the "is." The space, the gaps, the emptiness between "this" and "that," are convenient, enabling us to eat the green beans but not the fork, but it all means what we say it means, and we treat it as such.

Even when we deny/denounce duality and proclaim "All things are one!", suffering and freedom from suffering remain quite different, and we treat them as such in all times and places. "Not one. Not Two" remains the anomaly, calling for laughter that holds everything together as "One but not the same one" forever reminding us to lighten up and not take things so seriously, but keep the spirit of playfulness at the heart of being, and stop playing like it matters, as though it is REAL--and remember that we are not laughing enough. Authentic laughter is missing from our life. Everything waits for us ease up and start laughing, knowing it isn't what we say it is, and the joke is on us.

Which segues nicely into consciousness being all there is and everything being an aspect of consciousness at work in our lives. The more conscious we can be of living unconsciously amid assumptions and presumptions, inferences, conjectures, speculation, surmises and suppositions, the easier it will be to find ourselves laughing all of the time.