Introduction.

. First glances

There's always a direction to the river's flow. It's the bare essence of what we call "river": a natural stream of flowing water. "You can't stop the river flowing". Get it?

If it is not flowing, then it's not a river. 

Now imagine that come-and-go of water and feel the passage of time in your thoughts. Always coming. And going. There are many meditations that go this way.

Like rivers, our thinking is shaped by invisible currents, but we often think we know everything. We believe we can "remember" and that memory is a reliable source of fact checking!

“River” is a description of an event in space and time that is in constant motion. t's very handy for us to observe and remember those patterns because they tell us other things about the environment around them. They underlie understandings like the passage of time and pattern recognition.

Descriptions are used to create an image of something.

But as fragments, what we perceive and what we tell show very little of what the event “really” is.
Reality is beyond our grasp.

Being reminded of this at different points in life has made me curious about human biases and beliefs.

When one picture becomes a symbol - or when someone sees a single shot of a place and feels confident describing a place they’ve never known - one fragment turns into a whole movie. Lacking depth, lacking coherence, lacking honesty.

"There are things that only remain the same by changing".

To sustain power narratives must be created. Faith, addiction, comfort. Consistently. I wonder how elections will take place from now on...

In an era where data is currency and attention is sold, biases become market assets. The manipulation of perception isn’t new, but now it’s scalable. Governments, corporations, media; all offer fragments. And those fragments somehow start being called "truth".

A single image becomes a whole worldview. Metaphors become blinders. 

Without emotional intelligence, those same biases become fertile ground for manipulation - which, on a large scale, turns into markets negotiating with States. Turns business owners into political figures...

. Coming back

I like to think about rivers. Since my husband broadened my perspectives so I could see the "arrows of movement" many previous concepts were reshaped. Every single object is associated with many other arrows. Arrows everywhere! Anyway,

There's always a direction in basically... everything.

If we look long enough, without fogging the lens, we can trace where the arrows point to. Perceiving it is more data for us to respond in the present moment.

"Constancy shapes reality". 

By observing long enough we can discover what happened, and guess what will.

. Take care of your lens

I've been thinking about neuroplasticity so much. There's some physics perspective involved, also philosophy, education and geography. 

Pretty much of the lens I've tried to keep tidy up during this lifetime.

We can always see something when we look deep and long enough. But vision cannot be that blurred. Or else we won't see much.

"May every step be enlightened."