Three Ways to View the Sunset
Three [people] stood by the ocean, looking at the same sunset.
One person saw the immense physical beauty and enjoyed the event in itself. This person was the “sensate” type who, like 80 percent of the world, deals with what he can see, feel, touch, move, and fix. This was enough reality for him, for he had little interest in larger ideas, intuitions, or the grand scheme of things. He saw with his first eye, which was good.
The second person saw the sunset. He enjoyed all the beauty that the first man did. LIke all lovers of coherent thought, technology, and science, he also enjoyed his power to make sense of the universe and explain what he discovered. He thought about the cyclical rotations of planets and stars. Through imagination, intuition, and reason, he saw with his second eye, which was even better.
The third person saw the sunset, knowing and enjoying all that the first and second men did. But in her ability to progress from seeing to explaining to “tasting,” she also remained in awe before an underlying mystery, coherence, and spaciousness that connected her with everything else. She used her third eye, which is the full goal of all seeing and all knowing. This was the best.
Richard Rohr
from The Naked Now; Learning to See as the Mystics See
Sun Setting on the Mesa Painting Seamus Berkeley