In my practice of The Object and Its Glow, I have found myself shifting over into an experience which reminds me of another TSK practice, Intimacy. Often, contemplating on the inseparability of the object and its glow, I have moved from this to an experience of the “me” as an immediate, polar event: co-arising moment by moment with each perception, each perceived object, as its bright shadow. But this week, the experience has had more of a field-like, pervasive character: knowingness pervading the whole field of experience, rather than showing up as the polar “twin” of object perception.
At several points, I have noticed that there is a particular constellation of feelings and sensations that I habitually identify with as “the me.” I first recognized this identification while studying the Vedanta teachings of Jean Klein and practicing his “welcoming” posture of listening. He says that we may need to arrive at a sort of “geometric understanding” that approximates “unidentified knowing” before we really embody a new way of being. In this geometric understanding, in which we appear to momentarily “step out” of the patterns of ordinary experience, we are able to recognize the polarizing activities of identification that we are engaged in: we come to perceive that what we have taken to be the observer is actually, itself, simply one of the objects in the overall field of experience. When I’ve seen this, I have found myself “behind” the whole field of sense-perception, as a kind of welcoming space that receives and accommodates it all. Everything is equalized in this embrace. (This way of formulating things appears to be related to Rinpoche’s approach in Sacred Dynamics; I may return to that later).
Working with The Object and Its Glow has unexpectedly taken me in this direction, back to these insights. Intimacy seems to be a step past this geometric positioning — not just resting in this disengaged welcoming space, no longer “behind” everything as its background, but intimate with every point.
I do not want to give the impression that I’ve been having exalted mystical experiences here. These explorations have seemed “close to home,” somehow, showing up for me momentarily in my exploration of these things, or in the midst of daily, prosaic thoughts and concerns — not taking hold as an abiding way of perceiving, but flashing through and then fading.
Best wishes,
Bruce