We have seven mammals living in our household, and it seems that each of us is prone to shedding hair continuously. It’s not unusual to find dog, cat, and human hair scattered on the floor, creating a temporary, mixed carpet of fur from all species.
This morning, I watched a spider walking across the floor, navigating through a particular jungle of hair. Its spindly legs picked up strands of hair, making it stop occasionally to shake them off before continuing its journey.
As I observed this little scene, I imagined what it would be like to live in the spider’s world. A world where you walk across a smooth tile while enormous ropes of hair—of different sizes, shapes, and colors—cling to your legs. A world where, at any moment, you could be eaten by a giant, whiskered cat or accidentally squashed by a pair of shuffling slippers. It’s a completely different experience from mine, yet it’s the same world, isn’t it?
The only difference lies in perspective.
I often think about how the bacteria and other creatures living within my body perceive it. What I call “my body” is also their home. I experience my body as a large, moving form that serves as a vehicle for my awareness. But for the microbes living in it, it’s a dark world of moisture, chemicals, and nutrients. What I think of as “my body” might be, in their experience, just “their world.” It’s the same object, but the experience is entirely different depending on the perspective.
Even my own perception of my body overlooks the fact that it’s made up of many different, seemingly separate cells, most of which originally came from outside my body—food, water, air, impurities, viruses, germs, and the occasional craft beer. It’s a perfect example of how I think I know something as familiar as my own body, but in reality, I only know it from my limited perspective.
We often become so attached to our human, eye-level experience that we forget our perception of the world is an illusion. We see things from our limited point of view, but we never truly know what we’re experiencing. We don’t hear the world the way a dog does, nor do we see the spectrum of colors that a butterfly can. Yet, these aspects of reality exist within the world we occupy, and we rarely give them a second thought.
The mistake we make is believing that we truly “know” anything as it is or experience reality in its entirety. We live with conditioned, habitual thinking that forces us to label and categorize our experiences, leading us to believe we understand the truth of the world. But in fact, we only see distorted half-truths and illusions created by our minds, shaped by our upbringing, education, society, and personal opinions. By accepting this mind-made reality, we never truly know the truth of anything.
To spiritually experience reality, we must go beyond our mental constructs. We need to transcend our habitual thought patterns and experience the world in silence. We can look at a flower without the mind labeling it as a “flower,” without naming its color or its scent. We simply experience it, along with everything else, in deep silence and open awareness. In this state, the true nature of reality is revealed.
