1.5. The importance of seeing the whole

Suppose you are driving your car, and all your windshield is covered with snow, except for a small part, right at the center, a couple of fingers across, where you had an exceptional clear view. Now, if this were to happen we wouldn't want to drive the car, for even though there is a part of the landscape we can see exceptionally well, all the others are clouded, and the others are important to what we're doing. Now, in our personal life, in the history of our societies, in the development of civilizations, there are many relevant aspects, one of which, is the mind, the intellect. This is certainly a very important aspect, but emotions, feelings, impulses, even mere sensations, are also a bulwark of mankind. If you don't have our heart in the right place we will be sorry. Clarity is what allows us to see things clearly, from an emotional, ethical, aesthetical, spiritual, sexual and rational point of view, and others too. So, for instance, if you are very intelligent but use that intelligence to oppress, manipulate, and in general making people miserable around you by seeing them as means to some end, well then probably your intelligence will create more conflicts and suffering then love and well-being. Well, perhaps such a person does not care about love and well-being, but usually manipulative persons are trying to get other people to love them or at least to fear them. They seem to want company, or at least proximity. Why would they want to submit others if they did not desire their acceptance. So, in a sense, a very intelligent person can end up very frustrated if he/she does not understand what the emotional needs or desires that drive his/her actions. A prominent example of such confusions can be given by almost all publicity that passes on tv. For me personally publicity is much more offensive than, let's say, pornography, and I don't see it at all (unless I'm forced by circumstances), because it introduces confusions at the emotional level. For instance you see a commercial involving a car, yogurt, computer, whatever, and, through the commercial, it gets associated to a certain lifestyle, to certain feelings, etc. Almost everyone I know is deeply affected by the publicity they see on tv, and, however, almost everyone I know fiercely denies that publicity influences even the tiniest it of their life. But I see it happening. A few months ago a mobile phone company launched an unbeatable offer: for the same monthly payments and practically the same rates for normal phone calls, you would get free unlimited calls, either just voice or including video, to anyone that also adhered to that plan. This offer was for life. Now, who would not adhere? I still find stunning today that a lot of people stayed on their old rates plan. But only later did I understand the reluctance, it was the publicity! The mobile phone company did not want a large number of people to adhere, but they wanted the young guys, because they were loosing them over to the internet. So they devised a campaign that was great for rebel teenagers but despicable for grown ups. Adhering to this plan was connected (unconsciously) with a rebel lifestyle typical of rebel teenagers who use strong language and have respect for no adult. Now, adults would have difficulty going for this. Now obviously this is a confusion because having a certain rate plan on your mobile phone has nothing to do with being rebellious. This confusion between feelings or moods and unrelated facts is an easy confusion for an homo sapiens, it is very easy to associate fire with pain, but it is also very easy to associate cheap food with unhappy people. Pain in fact is related with touching fire, but cheap food as nothing to do with happiness. Quality food may have to do with happiness, but quality food is not expensive and it is relatively easy to make. So why do people prefer

In the above chapter we have distinguished between having a dirty and a clean windshield, we have said that clean windshields allow us to "drive" to walk around and explore, they allow us to see-through, while dirty shields show always the same image, maintaining a kind of soliloquy which might be very interesting, but that is always covering the same ground all over again. Now, this might be a somewhat misleading picture. Obviously if we are looking at a dirty windshield it is because we can see it clearly, perhaps we are so attracted to it that we are even seeing it with a microscope! If we have some kind of obsession with weight or sex for instance we'll spend a lot of time thinking about it, we might even see ourselves fat even though we are thin, or we might imagine a sexual attraction in someone that sees us just as a friend. but obviously, we'll have a very "clean windshield" regarding the particular aspects with which we are obsessed with. We might explore sexual fantasies or get to know how many calories different kinds of bread and yogurts have! So, generally speaking, being blind to the world, living in our own shell, having our eyes closed, is generally a matter of degree. Some people will be obsessed with just a part, while others see greater parts of the whole. But our work should be in the general direction of getting it all clear.