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Rebecca and I recently had an adventure into the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul).  They’re not huge as cities go, but for country-folk such as us, 3.5 million people is a pretty big town.  As someone who prefers to be able to disappear into a forest at a moment’s notice, this was rather intense.  But as we drove in to the city, Rebecca pointed out the crows flying overhead, and we started talking about what the city must look like from a crow’s perspective.

We came to the conclusion that the reason a city can sometimes feel claustrophobic is that there are a lot of imaginary lines.  We were at a friend’s house, and standing in their yard, we couldn’t walk more than about ten meters in any direction before we would have been trespassing.  The imaginary lines that designate ‘property’ can be more powerful to our psyche than actual fences.

There were lines of time as well.  People seemed to be in an awful hurry, and during the mornings and late afternoons, everyone was rushing to or from somewhere.

Then there were lines of behavior.  Where it’s perfectly acceptable in our small town to walk up to a stranger and introduce yourself, people seem surprised if you even meet their eyes in the city.

All in all, there were a lot of lines.  But they were all in the heads of humans.  The crows flew and perched where they wanted, our lines invisible to them.  They had a freedom that was greater than what could be accounted for by the power of their flight.

These lines are usually invisible to us, but they dominate our lives.  Perhaps they’re not entirely bad, since some people would argue that those lines are necessary to keep humans productive and peaceful.  But those lines also cause us a lot of stress and are often excuses for violence to both ourselves and others.

These lines are only one of the many mental processes that are running invisibly in the background of our minds, and which shape our worldview and much of our behavior.  The key is not to rebel against these mental processes or even to try to change them, but simply to become aware of them.  When we can observe them and realize the impact they have on our lives, we begin to live in awareness.

Challenge yourself to find just one of these ‘invisible’ processes each day.  It might be an assumption you make, a habitual action, or a preconception about how the world works.  When you discover one of these in motion, observe it, seek out its root, and have some fun discovering what lies underneath such daily activities.  The discoveries are often surprising.