Return to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Three Stages of Growing Consciousness

italic"So long as you do not die and rise again,
You are a stranger to the dark earth" - Goethe
Source

It has been exactly a year since I walked away from a job in a major an international media corporation. Like many other corporate entities out there, the company was going major transformation: change of structure and facing the hard knock reality of survival. It was the painful period of growth for myself and the surrounding. Again, real and imaginary. It felt like an intense power struggle, between the powerful​ and powerless. The reality of power was shifting in the midst​ of the dissolving of preexisting and outmoded structures of reality.

Perhaps, our inner-world is a true reflection of the external reality. Dirty works need to get done, we tried everything to keep up with the pace to shift. We struggle to hold on the old ways of how things used to work, more importantly how things aren't working anymore. I was picking up and pieces, when many things are collapsing due to the system in place are tightening the control, for the desire to consolidation construction​. We keep changing in the midst of change. I know we will get to the shore of hope, with an unquenchable faith of what the future might hold. The company needs new blood to do new things to sustain growth.

Season changes, the dead woods has to make room for the new people to come and renew. From time to time, you know how you just know there's desire to lose a bit of yourself to make room for the new experience, to grow and walk in the path that's meant for​. The crisis was tapped into the core of an intense experience of change - it was the fear we held on to, it felt raw and urgent.

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul." - Invictus BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
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In retrospect, this is all too common to nature of life and all things on earth. At the time, it was blantly toxic to bury all the angst, disappointment in the dark and seething inside. There was the time when I knew many of us have inner-work to do: Taking the time off, like churning the land so that we could create space to fertile the soil for the awakening to grow and blossom.

There's something about climbing mountains that I've always wanted to do. I made a spontaneous last minute decision to fly myself and @myday to the visit sacred the Huangshan Mountains. Seeing the ethereal beauty of the godly mountains is a truly magnificent experience. Huangshan was said to be the birthplace of where the legendary alchemists who sought to make pills of immortality.

We conquering ourselves onto the summit of the mountains through sheer strength, mentally and physically. We stood before the marvelous landscape which constantly changes ​the dynamic of the wind, the mystic unfoldment of the sea of clouds and mist. Huangshan is known to be a birthplace for the legendary alchemists to make pills out of immortality​.

What you see in front of you would be changed significantly in the next 2 minutes, if any sooner...Instantly the view changes, and you're shifted to another realm of reality. It's hard to know where you are, at the bottom, in the middle or on top of the peak. There's always something beyond the beyond in the infinte sea clouds.

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.”- Edward Abbey
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Photographed by @myday

We stumble across a wise old man who startled out of the ordinary in the rain right after the sunset. The three of us were ducking in the rain, the wise old man told us a little wisdom in the Chinese fable: "there are three realms of reality in life, essentially three stages of growing consciousness..."

1. Stage one: What you see is what it is - A mountain appears like a mountain. To see things from the eye of an originary, what you see is what it is. Remember the time when we were young, innocent and we see things exactly as what they are. "The Fool" in the tarot card is the best to describe the beginning stage to adventure into the big big world. His spirits are​ what we are. The child in the card of "The Fool" is carefree, who truly believe in himself and have faith in where the universe is taking him.

2. Stage 2: Confusion and disillusionment - A mountain does not appear like a mountain. This is a time you realise that things are what you it was, at least not as simple as what you thought. We question. We contemplate why. We want to work out the cause and effect all things happen to us. We want to find answers - perpetuates a core error in understanding of what you're yet to comprehend. In hindsight, this is a stage of becoming conscious.

3. Stage 3: What you see is till what it is - A mountain still appears like the mountain as what we saw in the first place. This is a time when we've become full conscious, seen through it all and truly understood the all. We've spent all these years pondering and we finally work out that the answer is simple as that. We've return external of the spotless mind.

@photographed by @myday

煙雨迷茫游黃山
自然氣息，變幻莫測
月圓月缺月陰晴
靈氣變幻無窮

久經磨練，來到此脫俗靈地
仿佛來到金庸先生小說《倚天屠龍記》
光明頂，明教所發源地
當年張無忌，
忍受寒毒苦練煎熬七年，
精研醫術毒術
當世無敵

人生不過三從境界：
－，看山便是山
二，看山不是山
三，看山還是山