Hello,
Here are my notes on TSK Ex 17 – The Object and Its Glow.
I’ve never seen a phosphorescent blossom before and was unsure how I might approach this exercise. While wondering, I called up images of other objects I’ve seen that glowed, or appeared to. One example was a single candle flickering in the darkness. In this instance a glow seemed to be a derived quality of a more basic or elemental aspect of the flame. Like an aura, it is a distinctive atmosphere, and perhaps a subjective sensation, surrounding the object.
If I were to use the flame as a metaphor for myself in the context of this exercise, the glow might represent my derived identity, its brightness and composition a reflection of a deeper and more elemental ignition.
I think maybe the glow can be analogous to the logos, as a “governing understanding active within a temporal order,” is similar to the sense of self comprised of memories and feelings and referent activities. In investigating the glow, the exercise encourages an active inquiry into our governing logos, and our assumptions of how things are. The logos, the self, and the glow, all share a quality of being derived from a more elemental or fundamental dawning of space, time, and knowing.
In investigating, I noticed I could modulate perspectives from a narrow, linear objectifying view, to a more open-by-inclusion view through merging. In fact, at some point I seemed to continuously alternate between fixing and letting go of the moments, as I fixed and let go of viewing positions. I felt a sensation of modulating perspectives, as almost like gliding. The feeling reminded me of the following quote from DTS p183, regarding letting go of the controlling tendency of the self, and ‘the opportunity to invite a deepening knowledge’:
“It is like suddenly learning how to fly: Before we advanced in a mechanical way; now we can soar and float and sweep and swoop.”
When I notice myself objectifying, and then opened that tendency, I had that swoop and sweep feeling: Swooping in on a more direct intimacy with that moment and with what was presenting, and sweeping to a more encompassing awareness of depth and breadth of capacity. I’m using the word ‘moment’ to refer to a frame or fix the controlling self was taking on time’s presentation.
On another level, I realized that I began with the thought that what swoops is the subjective point from which the ‘I’ establishes as if it were fixed, but then questioned, if there is no real fixed point, then what is there to swoop? And if there is nothing to swoop, then what glides and sweeps must be a focal setting on time and space that knowing distinguishes.
David
