Hello, all,
I have returned now from my holiday wanderings. It was great to be able to contemplate TSK from an “outsider” perspective while travelling, as Jack commented. and will be even better to take that awareness into everyday life. However, it is good to be able to reconnect with the comments of all the rest of you, as it was so difficult to get access to a PC in the countries I was travelling in that I only posted my experiences and then got off quickly to allow others access.
My expereince with The object and its Glow exercise in the last few days has developed over the period. When contemplating a static object I could quite readily relate to the approach that my perception, and I, were, in a way, an attribute of the object. Without the object, my perception of it would not exist, but without my presence the object is still present. However, at one point I was contemplating a book in front of me with this kind of awareness when a scrub turkey (a large Australian native flightless bird) came running distractedly through my yard, pursued by other birds. My gentle “distanceless” relationship with the book dissolved as I transferred my relationship to the bird rushing to and fro. I found it exceptionally difficult to consider myself as the ‘glow’ of a distracted bird running around the yard – the distance between me and the object of contemplation quickly returned, the separation immediately snapped back into place. “Intervening distance” seemed to me much more difficult to dissolve when the object of contemplation is active, unpredictable, moving erratically.However, the next day I tried to re-contemplate this issue, and I realised that what was preventing me from relating to both sets of objects in a similar way was in fact my own self-imposed limitations, the boundaries that I create. Distance-less association can exist as long as my observation and relationship ‘flows’ with the movement of the object itself.
I was also interested in David’s comment about observing a candle, which reminded my of the Candle Gazing exercise that I often do as part of my meditation practise. As I gaze at the candle consistently, I find that I become one with the candle. I am part of the candle, there is no distance between the two of us, but rather a flow of consciousness which encompasses the both of us. This awareness can occur not only with physical objects, but also with sounds. I can, during meditation, become one with any noise entering my awareness. I am the sound as it flows through me.
Gaynor