Seeing what we look at requires us to see our seeing. S.I. Hayakawa has several books, “Language in Thought and Action” being one, that help us see our seeing by becoming conscious/mindful of our seeing and opening the world to possibilities and outcomes that would not have been possible otherwise. We have to work at seeing what we look at in order to know what we are doing and becoming sources of help in our sphere of being.

Seeing what we look at helps us respond appropriately to what’s happening, partly by being aware of the critical importance of emptiness, stillness and silence–the three essential experiences necessary for realization, comprehension, understanding and knowing.

These four qualities are at the heart of our relationship with Tao, Psyche, Intuition, which leads the way in our doing what we do and living the way we live. At one with Tao, Psyche, Intuition, we are a source of, force of good in the world, simply because good is how the way of Tao, Psyche, Intuition are experienced, felt, known.

And the words, Tao, Psyche, Intuition are simply pointers to “That which cannot be said,” in the same way that “God” is a pointer to “That which cannot be said,” regardless of all that has been said about God for the last 10,000 years, or longer, but it can be a source of comfort and direction in how we live our life. The same goes for Tao, Psyche and Intuition. I no longer use the word God because it comes encased in theology, doctrine, belief to the point where no one knows what we are talking about when we use the word God, and it leads to confusion, disagreement, argument, destabilization resulting in quite a mess.

Seeing what we look at is essential to the work of life and being, and we have to have a vocabulary to do that, and that means being consciously away of the difference between the articulation of our realization of experience with words, and the verbalization of certain ways of thinking about experience with words about words. This kind of verbalization is what the Tao Te Ching has in mind with its, “The Tao that can be told/said/discussed is not the eternal Tao.” We can articulate our experience with Tao, but we cannot say anything knowledgeable about Tao.

And seeing what we look at means understanding the limitations of saying what we see about what we look at. Projections, interpretations, and misunderstands stand in the way of accurate verbalization and articulation.