The associative patterns of the mind, what are their functions?  Do they exist merely for us to acquire, accumulate, attain things (including food and shelter), and differentiate with (and from) an element of separation?  Do such patterns dictate — to us — what we see? 

We usually look at things through labels, through images that we have learned.  A person often distinguishes things (at a distance, separate from himself).  The patterns that we hold dictate what we see.  However, we are these absorbed patterns; we do not actually hold them; they are not separate from what we essentially are.  Real wholeness, real integrity, real love, may involve looking beyond the patterns, beyond the old, stuffy mental accumulations, beyond the labels, beyond the mental separative distance.