I explored both of the assigned practices this week. I enjoyed both, but I’m not quite sure how they relate to each other.
With abiding in thought, I found myself, at least initially, approaching it imaginally and “geometrically” — finding a perpendicular abiding orthogonal to the flow of experience, as if each movement of thought or arising image or feeling opened onto a well, or maybe a worm-hole, that ran right through its heart. As I pursued this, I found this movement itself became the content on which I was focusing — this imagined opening of an axis, extending and expanding upwards and downwards at once. When this became the image, then “perpendicularity” lost its transecting meaning and I retreated to the still “core” of the axis, a stillness at the heart of that upward-downward movement. The sense of boundedness or locatedness of this still core dissolved and it became non-local, or maybe omni-local: every movement in every direction was transparent to, and suffused with, this non-local allowing awareness: an allowing which allowed for the opening of containers and envelopes of “space” without itself being a container.
This sense of “envelopes of space” was what emerged in the intersubjective or interpersonal assignment for this week. On an intellectual level, I was stimulated by the exercise because it reminded me of Peter Sloterdijk’s book, Bubbles (Spheres Vol 1), which I’ve been wanting to read for awhile now. Experientially, I found that, in the space “between,” I found I was capable of being surprised by what was emerging. The realization of the non-ownership of experience came, for me, in this capacity for surprise: I wasn’t “in charge” of this intersubjective space. I could influence it, but I also found myself adjusting to, and my embodiment — posture, feeling tone, gestures — being influenced or evoked/invoked by this emergent space-between. Like a horizon calling forth newness.
Today, on a related note, I was inspired to create a song and video on the theme of space, which I share with you below:
Best wishes,
Bruce
Thank you, Michael and David, for your comments on the video/song. Michael, I smiled at the reference to “rabbit hole,” since I had just been thinking about that metaphor the other day — feeling, indeed, as if I’d slipped down it recently! A wonderful journey, indeed, with (more than?) a few Mad Hatter moments… :-) David, you’ve found an excellent quotation to complement the visuals (and, appropriately, right from our current readings!). Perfect.
~ Bruce
Thank you for such beautiful music and visuals. It is so useful to have a video of sky like this with music for meditation. The quiet space is so clear.
Hi Bruce,
Regarding your video, what a wonderful space meditation, the majesty of allowing space:
“The moment we look ‘behind’ the established point, appearance and its derivation become questionable in fruitful ways. What appears to be so appears in a new light. Its qualities vary, depending on the angle from which we look, the perspective we take, and the depth of field of our focal setting.” DTS p.46
Your visuals seem to echo the modulations of depth of field, your flute’s multilayerd melodies as time, renewing and moving as space, never fixed but fluid.
Just great! :-)
David
Hi Bruce,
What a beautiful slide show: painting pictures of the far beyond, and accompanied by flute music that evokes a mind at home on this planet of ours. I guess you need that kind of anchoring in the dirt in order to embark on your journey down the rabbit hole. You and Alice are both explorers of Wonderland. Thanks for sharing your Cliff notes on a book that I would have trouble lifting off the shelf. Quite wonderful. –Michael