Headstands and Apes

After settling down in Tokyo, I began going to the vast Meiji Park to do yoga in the morning before work. While standing on my head and seeing people walking by off in the distance, I noticed something odd. The people had an obvious bob in their gait as they walked. Initially I wondered if they were walking that way on purpose, for I’d never seen this before. Then I realized that I’d never actually watched people walking while standing on my head.

The gait I saw reminded me of apes, and after all, we humans are apes. All it took for me to see our true way of walking was a 180-degree shift in perspective. These days I notice this bob in people much less when I do yoga down at the beach. The novelty wore off —familiarity breeds blindness.

The moral here: I must offset familiarity to see the world anew, or sometimes to even see the world as it may actually be. The question is, how can I counteract familiarity? The Correlation process (p.572) helps.

Trusting language helps impart a sense of familiarity with life. The more I trust language, the more certain I am that I know. I easily fall into the trap chapter 71 points out, Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. Even so, the benefit of this lies in how “thinking I know” allows me to feel secure in my ignorance. Chapter 72 tells me the price I pay for this “blissful” refuge of cognitive ignorance, When the people lack a proper sense of awe, then some awful visitation will descend upon them.