An optical illusion

When I’m caught up in stressful thinking, feeling sad or anxious or frustrated, it can seem like there is no other option available. 

No matter how hard I try, no matter how closely I look,

I can’t seem to find any solution or anything helpful. 

And I certainly can’t find any nice feeling.

It’s like an optical illusion.

Have a look at the picture below - let’s say you can only see the old woman.

Now you can go and try very hard, stare at it closely, get very tensed 

and try to shift it, and it’ll probably do nothing.

It’s because the young woman isn’t to find IN the picture of the old woman.

No matter how closely you look.

But when you step back, relax and take a fresh look,

you might suddenly see the young woman.

It’s the same with the peace and the thinking. 

The peace isn’t to find IN the thinking.

No matter how hard I try to shift and bend my thinking to somehow make 

it look more peaceful …

But at some point suddenly something shifts in my awareness and there it is.

And it’s not only there, it’s very obvious that it’s been there all along. 

In a way it’s like the peace/quiet (or whatever you like to call it) is

so big and all around me and inside me, it’s so obvious, 

that I sometimes simply overlook it. I’m getting so drawn into some details,

a problem, a judgment, a certain thing that needs to be changed, that I 

don’t see anything around or beyond it anymore.

Luckily there are some lovely coaches and teachers around,

that keep reminding me it’s there, even when I can’t see it.

Nobody can ‚make‘ me see it, but it seems to

help when somebody whom I trust reminds me that it’s there.

And the more often I see it shift from one to the other,

the illusion becomes more transient. 

Simply knowing it’s there, and trusting that knowing, makes it easier to see it.