Exercises 18 and 21: how separate are the three times?

Peter has some questions about Ex. 21. He starts his Post (in German) with a lovely description of his experience doing Ex. 20 during church services last Sunday; I won’t try to translate that, but it’s a good reminder that these exercises can be undertaken in daily life.

(By the way, a question came up for me recently: If we are actively practicing TSK in daily life, why don’t we care to do so in our dreams? I am not referring to lucid dreaming, just to the idea that we could be interested in TSK during our dreams as well. Perhaps we are less than fully ourselves in dreams.)

Now, as to 21, he sees no way into it. Trying to single out subtle past/future dimensions of experience, he finds that the present experience turns into a mishmash–everything jumbled together. Not only that, but the present has by now turned into the past. With thoughts, things go better: he finds himself experiencing light, color, and sensation, with questions of meaning not very important.

My sense, Peter, is that you may be insisting too much on the difference among the three times. The past and the future may already be present. For instance, suppose that I focus on my experience and in a dreamy way notice an image of a woman. This woman has her past and her unknown future. They are present now. In the same way, the computer I am writing at has its past (for me, or more objectively: there is something of the assembly worker in China who put it together) and perhaps its future. And what I am writing has its past and its future; in fact, focusing on that past and future, there seems almost nothing left of present, except a mysterious space from which the words emerge, without my really knowing how or doing anything about it.

Ron in his comment on Ex. 18 mentions that he did this exercise on and off (ab und zu) during the day. I think that kind of light-hearted approach pays off.

Jack