The Element of Surprise in Life

I saw then that my sense of me being me was exactly the same thing as my sensation of being one with the whole cosmos.

Fractal FlowerI did not need to have some sort of different, odd kind of experience to feel in total connection with everything.

fractal_stock_01302012_by_dsynegrafix-d4o3vjgOnce you get the clue you see that the sense of unity is inseparable from the sense of difference.

Fractal GapYou would not know yourself, or what you meant by self, unless at the same time you had the feeling of other. Now the secret is that ‘the other’ eventually turns out to be you.

FractalThe element of surprise in life is when suddenly you find the thing most alien turns out to be yourself.

fractal_stock_11912_2_by_dsynegrafix-d4mvlpfGo out at night and look at the stars and realize that they are millions and billions of miles away, vast conflagrations far out in space.

Fractal Stock 43You can lie back and look at that and say, ‘Well, surely I hardly matter.

Fractal DragonflyI am just a tiny little speck aboard this weird spotted bit of dust called earth, and all that was going on out there billions of years before I was born and will still be going on billions of years after I die.’

Fractal Valentine

Nothing seems stranger to you than that, or more different from you, yet there comes a point, if you watch long enough, when you will say, ‘Why that’s me!’ It is ‘the other’ that is the condition of your being yourself, as the back is the condition of being the front, and when you know that, you know you never die.

*Quotes by Alan Watts, Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life

Image credit (used with permission under CC license)–
“Fractal Flower” by Daniel Chapelle

“Fractal Stock 01302012” by DsyneGrafix

“Fractal Gap” by Barabeke

“Fractal” by Patrick Theiner

“Fractal Stock 11912-2” by DsyneGrafix

“Fractal Stock 43” by BFstock

“Fractal Dragonfly” by Christoph Zurbuchen

“Fractal Valentine” by Laura Harris