My old boss was really into Krishnamurti for a while. And he (my boss) had a bit of an epiphany after reading "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" - http://www.amazon.co...ve/dp/1585429201/ .

Our brain has lots of ways to look at and try to understand our environment. I haven't read it myself, but I think I got the gist of the book from talking with him. As a kid I was into drawing for a while. I remember once working on a drawing of Michelangelo's Pietà from a picture. It suddenly dawned on me to draw the shadows rather than the boundaries. (It didn't turn out too badly, but I gave up on it before it was finished.) Looking at things and seeing the shadows rather than the thing itself can be kinda relaxing - it supposedly uses a different side of your brain.

Similarly, in high school I was at a pool party and bored and ended up looking at the light dancing off the waves in the pool for quite a while...

And in a college lab experiment we were doing the Millikan Oil Drop Experiment - where you have to time some tiny oil drops as they fall some distance in a pitch-black room, the time depending on how much charge they pick up as they move in a capacitor. If you looked directly at them, it was hard. If you relaxed your eyes as if you were staring into space, it was much easier.

What our "thinking man" part of our brain thinks is reality is only a tiny piece of the sensations and experiences we pick-up, usually subconsciously, every day.

Hang in there, you two. :-)

Cheers,
Scott.