mirror, mirror, on the wall (14:16)

For best results, watch this while standing in front of a mirror, ideally in private so you can play along.

I think a camera is an interesting metaphor for how we receive information. Awareness is like the aperture that allows info to reach the inner realization point, like the pinhole allowing light to hit film. Attention is like the lens that shapes & funnels information toward the aperture, its contouring reflected in the image: tight focus, panorama, distance shot, etc.

We become stuck in certain lenses, addicted to certain lenses. This entrances us to limited ways of seeing the world, resulting in small mindedness, which is not unintelligence so much as an ignorance generated by persistent blind spots, the areas beyond the view & resolution of our habitual lenses. We can't discover what we can't behold, & limiting our lenses limits our beholding.

Here, I play some mirror games to practice flexing the lenses of attention. There are no bad lenses. There are lenses ill suited to certain modes of being. & there are addictions to lenses, which result in us forcing the wrong lenses into situations. The better we recognize our lenses, the more we learn the flex them, & the more insightful & honest we become about our lens addictions & rigidities, the richer our experience becomes, & the less likely we are to slip into entrancement & small mindedness.

https://youtu.be/t7PxMfn8tNY