Robert Heinlein wrote "Stranger in a Strange Land". Great novel. I was taken by a set of characters called Fair Witnesses, and I've thought a lot about the idea since then. Like a judge, they wore robes when "in office", which could be anywhere. Like judges, they did their best to experience and report things without the tarnishment of their own opinions and life-experiences. It would be a profession, but a similar study would benefit us all.
. . The strong character in that part was Jubal, which I've since learned is Arabic for mountain. Jubal demonstrated the skills of a Fair Witness to a guest. He asked a Witness if she saw a house on the far hill, and asked her what color it was.
. . She said, "It's white... on this side." You see, I'm sure, that she'd say only what she knew --on the other side.... it could be purple. If you don't know, you don't know. The Fair Witnesses were extensively trained in the limits and side effects of their awareness, beyond what anyone else had been... except for Zen masters. Zen did something like this... centuries ago. I want it to be part of Gaia. It's good practice for us all; you don't have to devote your life to it --just do what feels good.
. . Zen is a study that centers on awareness. It's full of paradoxes. Here's one: it's so hard to understand because it's so... darn... simple! In fact, to teach noviates, Masters resort to tricks called koans, to stop all their over-thinking. You'll never get close to reality if you keep thinking about what you see. Stop it! Let it be what it is. It cannot be what it is until --so to speak-- that tree in the forest falls and nobody's there... nobody, just your eyes and ears. And it does make a cloud of dust and a snap, splinter and crash... while you feel the entire lifespan of that tree. Let sound hit you and the photons fall on your retinas without naming the objects they paint. See it and hear it, etc., with everything except your brain. You don't ahve to do it all the time, just know how.
. . The same for sex. Especially! The first touch of a lover's lips has so much more vitality than it does after a few years. Why? It's not that your nerves fade; not that you love less. The feeling slowly slips into our area of inattention. Water to a fish. But awareness is very rewarding. It takes only your awareness and attention to change your perception. The original feeling is still available!
. . To revitalize your perceptions, jolt your conception. Remember what it was like before. Be in the moment. Make it the first time again; it's not so hard. Don't take them for granted. (If she feels like a rock, maybe it's because you took her for granite!)
. . Practice awareness of touch; let your nerves tingle; be there. That tingle depends only on your awareness level. By awareness, I do not mean knowledge or thought, but the opposite: uncritical, even unexamined, simple experiencing. Typically, women are much better at this than men. A hint, guys: that's what they mean by "sensitive". Practice how to detect that whoosh when something obvious passes over your head.
. . You see, it's not a practice of how to be aware --it's practice on how to stop interfering with perceptions.

Awareness is a very Zen topic. So what's Zen?

Here it is: Zen is... what is. Alone. That's all. It is... all that "stuff" out there. Interacting. Or just laying there. It is what is... before we tarnish it with our eyes; before we paint pictures on it with our experiences. You know how we paint pictures on people. We don't notice that kids have grown. On a date, we see the person we want to see. In the news, we hear how even psychologists who were abused as kids, see abuse in all cases, regardless of the facts.
. . Babies and --perhaps-- other animals can still see reality as it is. It can take a lifetime for us to get back to that pure knowledge. But it's worth the effort, because... if you can't be a simple witness of it, you can't really be a part of it! Again: if you can't take your self out of it, you can't be part of it! Talk about voluntary excommunication! Except it's the only way to really contact it. (The it is what Alan Watts called "The it in the phrase... it is raining.)
. . So I began to imagine a college course I could teach. A "Gaia University" course. I'd call it Fair Witness Training. Remedial Awareness! Reality 101! How you too can be part of the world. Not everyone is, y'know. A good percentage of the population is in the business of brainwashing the rest of us. But the training --the inoculation against pre-digested conceptions-- really should start in kindergarten. It's the biggest necessary part of our education that's totally missing. How to see what is.
. . The Fair Witness motto could be: "To know Nothing." ("A Cognito Nolo"?) To "know" nothing enables one to experience everything.
. . The human mind seems to love symbols and metaphors. The mind wants them hopelessly, sometimes even desperately. Yes, they help us to understand, when we first encounter a subject. But usually, they're too simplistic to be useful for long. Then they get in their own way and trip us up. Some people want things to stay simple, and say that things really are as simple as symbols and metaphors.

But they are not. In their complexity is beauty.
. . Nothing extremely simple is beautiful. (I donno; we can debate that. Maybe Hollywood starlets are an exception.)
. . Ok; *only simple things are beautiful.

Usually, people form an opinion --or merely take the first one offered (predigested)-- and then look for and collect evidence that supports only that opinion. The bland leading the bland. And what is "evidence", anyway? It's an enormous coincidence, isn't it, that the gods did things like lightning only until we found out how nature did them. Science is causing unemployment on Mt Olympus!

. . Awareness has become more difficult.

The human mind is multi-tasking... to a point. In today's world, we get so attention-busy that we are forced to develop selective inattention. Too many things clamor for our eyes and ears. And wallets. We gotta ignore something! So our minds filter it down to only the imperative stuff. We ignore the billboards when we're in heavy traffic. It becomes a habit. Even walking, we're usually distracted by some thought, and miss the birdsongs... the smell of the flowers. Even if we think we hear it, do we really?

(HEY! I just thought... maybe I'm wrong... aren't birdsongs always in key? How'd they learn how to do that? Or is it my malleable memory?)

Anyway... I'm not saying that we must force a total change and never get distracted. Just... once (or twice) in a while, practice seeing and listening... deeply. Keep in touch with reality. Don't be a strange.

Perception is pure; concepts corrupt it. What we think we know determines or modifies what we see. We see what we think is there, which is never exactly what really is there. Probably... nobody really sees it. But some are much farther from the truth than others. The sun does not revolve around the (flat) Earth, tho common sense tells us it does.
. . To my gal, the instant I finish my meal, the smear left on my plate is instantly transformed into... dirt! What colors your perception? Social convention/tradition? Advertizing?

Here's the secret! If you want to know what really is, try to prove it isn't! Then tell exactly how you tried, and have other people try; maybe they'll try harder than you did. If you all fail, then maybe it's real after all. That's the scientific method. It gets your opinion, and your feelings, and "common sense" out of the way, and lets reality speak for itself. So called "common sense" is one of the biggest pitfalls to understanding reality, because nobody thinks it's worth testing, or can't think of how.

What is "faith" but a vow not to ask reality about its true nature. Faith --in anything-- is purposeful, voluntary ignorance.... in support of some fantasy. A stunt-plane pilot doesn't just have faith that his aircraft is worthy --he checks every nut, bolt, rivet, cable and sparkplug he possibly can! Okay, so it's a rather strict definition of faith, but to accept without thought whatever is told is a total waste of mind --a God-given mind, if you will. Do you think any believable, respectable god-image (i.e. by any name/from any religion) would respect some human who believed in him just because somebody *told him to believe it?

Another great phrase (this one is not mine ): "Correlation does not imply causation." It means that just because A precedes B, does not mean A caused B.

Is this "cold" science? Not at all --actually, it's a way to sneak a peek into the secret life of the universe. When truth speaks, it is living nature revealing itself --its inner beauty-- it should be a warm spiritual revelation. It's not some wacko's fantasy; it's what is, all by itself. Do a scientific experiment; even if hundreds of people have done it before, when you've done it, you've just had the truth... speak... to you. So....

To be aware of what's outside, you gotta be aware of your own inner nature --your automatic reactions; your biases.

Then, after all the care you'd take to see things without coloring them, you then must communicate those perceptions to another person in such a way that it is least likely to get colored by his conceptions! So they can see it as purely as possible too. This requires exact language. There are a lot of phrases common in any culture that say things we don't actually mean. The sun doesn't really try to get through the clouds.

As well as Zen and science, there's a lot of psychology in this Fair Witness practice, because to know what is--outside your ego/self--you must know how to subtract what's inside your ego/self. What comes from outside gets filtered through all the crap and confusion of what's inside... before it gets perceived. Remember:
CONCEPTION CLOUDS PERCEPTION.