Perceptions...

"What one perceives is a result of interplays between past experiences, including one’s culture, and the interpretation of the perceived."

Ok. So what I "see" is not what is "out there". So, I am worse than blind. Not only do I not "see", but I "see", and then that "is not it".

Worse yet...I am superbly invested in my views. It's "the only thing I have!"

And then, this "guy" (no lack of respect, that's what the quotes mean...), says: “Through ownership of something that is going on exclusively inside our heads, we are constantly and unconsciously defining ourselves, and creating self-serving feedback loops of immense complexity. ...Such is our investment in our views that we are always willing to defend them over the views of others, implicitly believing that our views are real while others’ views are mere opinions.”

(Mu Soeng: "from Anatta to Shunyata", quoted by S. Cope in Wisdom of Yoga, p. 128)

No wonder!

As I build all these barriers around myself, so as to protect me from the "world out there", the world in here, inside those barriers, becomes a very insecure place to be..."like a country surrounded by foreign powers: it may be overrun by any quality that it has defined as being outside its boundary. As a consequence of its extremely insecure ground, the ego devotes a great deal of energy to bolstering its position".  Swami Ajaya, Psychotherapy East and West: A Unifying Paradigm (Honesdale, Pa: The Himalayan Institute, 1997, pp 128-9).

Isn't that so familiar! When I hear myself - or others - start defending, skirting or encroaching on something, many times even something that is not on the discussion 'table' as of yet, can you not 'smell' fear, weakness, maybe even aggression, negative energy, unwelcoming stances, and a sense of a "run away!" impulse?  "The act of creating a subject automatically creates the rest of the world as object. And now we are  separate from it." (Stephen Cope, p. 130 of The Wisdom of Yoga). All ego consciousness is isolated: because it separates and discriminates, it only knows particulars...Its essence is limitation". (Carl Jung,  quoted on p130 of above)

..."until we can know the paradox and complexity of living as simple presence". (Cope, p. 128)

Watch, just watch. And let be.

Hmmmm.