A chapter from Candice O'Denver's "Clarity in Everyday Life: A Handbook and Guide"

1. WHAT’S LOOKING?
When we look out through our eyes, what is it exactly that is looking? If one
looks for what is looking, the conclusion is not quite as definitive as
psychology textbooks might tell us. What’s looking is always looking. It’s
impossible that it not be looking. When this looking is looked for, nothing is
found. If we look within ourselves for what’s looking, we can’t really say
where looking is located.
Our looking is in fact the looking of everything; it isn’t the looking of an
isolated individual. If we only know ourselves as an individual identity, then
we might say, “Oh yes; my individual identity is located here in me. This is
who I am. It is I who is looking out at the world.” However, there is in fact
no individual. Our identity is not fixed by the consolidation of factors of our
personal history—our memory, people, places and things we’ve known or
actions we’ve taken in life.
If we relax and let the looking be ​as it is​, the whole idea about the looking
being from within the skin line of an individual person dissolves. If we look
for what’s looking, we actually don’t find anything specific or substantial.
What we do find is purity, natural perfection and a vital emptiness that can’t
be located anywhere within our skin line. Looking out from all phenomena is
the same looking. A name for this looking is open intelligence; it is open
intelligence that is looking. We can never isolate an identity other than our
identity as open intelligence.
We live in a world of images, but more importantly, we live as ​the looking
that lives within every single one of those images. There isn’t any looking
separate from any image that appears; the looking is within the image, and
the image occurs in, of, as, and through the looking. This is very important
for us to understand.