Perception Versus Sensing

Metaphors are very helpful in understanding spiritual "vision." Metaphors can sometimes serve as the ideal proxy for vision. It is analogous to tactile vision substitution systems in which a video signal can be converted into a haptic signal. Once felt, you understand its meaning, and there is no need for the literal "scaffold." This is just enough feedback for meaning and understanding.

Social Media is a kind of substitution system where we think we're in a public square where everyone in our group can see and hear everything we do. But that's an illusion because people aren't always visible or are "hidden" by time or space, i.e. they weren't there because they were busy, or the focal point was blocked.

Some tourists in downtown Chicago once asked me where the (fka) Sears Tower was. It's the tallest building in Chicago, and was only two blocks away, a shorter distance than it is tall. That's when I realized that being lost is just a matter of moving a short way so you can find the focal point.

The smallest object is "hidden" by default. In social media, the smallest increment is the data point, the point that indicates that there is information in the "dark matter" we don't see, but it is there when placed in a context. A planet is defined by the "red shift." You see the Sears Tower when you realize where you need to be to see it. This works as a metaphor in the spiritual realm, as well as in art, as having an "eye" for something means you have found a means to see something in some other dimension.

A spiritual path is predicated on the faith that some things are simply hidden from view because of the illusion of space and time.