« Reading "Red" »

Reading “The Red Book” by C.G. Jung, I come across the following fragment:

“Willing creates blindness…”

Indeed, it does.  Willing creates attentional focus.  Focus obscures the field.  Once set, the goal turns the mind into a Gestalt-hunting hound, with its attentional nose to the ground, oblivious to the rest of what is.

It’s figure-ground dynamics: you either see the foreground or the background.  When you focus on the figure, the rest fades out into conceptualy-neutral backdrop, and what was no longer is.

Willing is an attentional force, a kind of acceleration of the mind towards the object of one’s interest.   This attentional acceleration of willing blurs vision.  Attentional blindness ensues: all you care to see is what you are pursuing, the rest – subjectively – ceases to exist.  And this “tunnel vision” is the onset of existential blindness.

Goal-oriented mind is blind to context.

“Whereas willing creates blindness, letting restores vision…” echoes my mind.

Pump the breaks, slow down to notice the context of the moment, see what else exists.  Reality isn’t just an obstacle to your goal.  It’s all there is.  The rest is mind-fiction.