Being caught up in judging what seems to be, 

we miss what really is. 

Remember those blind men who were each taken to a different part of an elephant: its head, an ear, a tusk, its trunk, its stomach, a foot, its tail, and the tuft of its tail?

Asked to describe the elephant, each man announced what it resembled: a pot, a basket, a plowshare, a plow, a storehouse, a pillar, a pestle, and a brush. We can only imagine that as each man proclaimed what an elephant was like, he must have wondered what on earth the others were talking about.

But each man, knowing what he had experienced in examining the elephant, only became even more insistent that he was right. All the others had to be wrong. And so, instead of sharing what they had learned and discussing among themselves why they had reached such different opinions, they began to fight amongst themselves.

When we, like those men, become adamant that we know all that needs to be known and close our mind to others, we too run the serious risk of missing what really is.