As you go about your daily business did you realize that you're accumulating knowledge about the world and the people and things within it? When you meet someone and interact with them, you store away important details that you learn from their behavior. "He's smart." "She's pretty." "They were mean to me." "I love her." All these observations and memories are accumulated and stored for later use.
This accumulation of knoweldge, memories and information is what I refer to as The Image. You cannot help but to build The Image. It is what you do. Don't fight The Image... understand it. The first thing to understand about The Image is that it is both a blessing and a curse.
What makes The Image a blessing is that without it, there would be no continuity of experience. You could not drive your car, walk across the room, read this text or distinguish yesterday from today without it. Knowledge, information and memories are necessary to interact with the world in any meaningful way. The Image is a blessing because it allows you to build a model of the world and use that model to predict outcomes and recognize patterns. The Image enables communication and interaction. It's these things that The Image provides that I feel grateful for. God bless The Image for what it gives us.
What makes The Image a curse is when we confuse it with reality. We are so used to building, cherishing, protecting and paying attention to The Image that we forget that it is just an image. We forget that it's a tool to help us interact with reality... not reality itself. Through laziness and habit, we become hopelessly reliant on The Image to interpret everything that we see within ourselves and the world around us. The pattern matching power of The Image becomes a curse when we believe it over what is real.
Example: Remember a time that you got angry when you heard someone say something only to find out later that you misunderstood them. When you first heard what they said, you relied on The Image to interpret what was said. The interpretation wasn't favorable and so you gave yourself the feeling of anger. Later, when you learned the truth about what was said, you relied again on The Image to interpret things. The interpretation became favorable and so you stopped giving yourself the feeling of anger.
Another example: Imagine an old bigot that has built an Image that black people are less than human. Just like you, this bigot interprets everything he sees through The Image. When he sees a black man the bigot becomes agitated and emotionally upset. The bigot's interpretation of his Image causes him to create negative feelings. Once the black man is out of sight and forgotten, the bigot's interpretation of his Image allows him to stop creating negative feelings.
The mechanism is obvious, isn't it? When reality matches The Image, we give ourselves pleasure. When reality doesn't match The Image, we give ourselves pain. The Image is not reality, but we believe in it so completely that it rules our emotions in every moment. This belief of The Image over reality is the source of all emotional excitement and upset. Observe your own reliance on The Image in your daily life and see for yourself. This is the curse of The Image.
The second thing to understand about The Image is that it is changeable. It can be easily changed if you don't believe in it. Indeed, you don't have to believe The Image to use it. Believing in The Image makes it seem more real. The longer you believe in it, the more real it seems. At some point, it seems impossible that The Image isn't real. Does it seem difficult to disbelieve The Image when you've believed in it so long? If you're interpreting this through The Image then it will seem to be quite an impossible feat.
You know, in reality, disbelieving the image is as simple as breathing. All you need do is observe yourself and your reliance on The Image. Observe, without judgment, how you interpret all things through it and decide what things mean out of laziness and habit. See clearly how you don't actually see anything clearly when The Image is involved. This simple act of seeing will reveal the true nature of The Image. Once you glimpse this, you will never see yourself or The Image in the same way again. Seeing The Image is the way to being free of The Image.
What's it like when you're free of The Image? You no longer take The Image seriously. You see clearly that it is an experiential tool and nothing more. You no longer beleive in it and you no longer give yourself pleasure and pain as The Image commands. What's it like when you're free of The Image? You finally forgive... you finally have peace... you finally love...