Photo courtesy of: ‘Space and Time’ by jplenio – Pixabay
https://tinyurl.com/yc77xg7a
The quote from the book by Jack Petranker, “When It Rains Does Space Get Wet?” p.63, had me inquiring for quite awhile: “Appearance makes space manifest without ever becoming anything other than space.” I didn’t have trouble with the second part of the statement, about appearance remaining space, thanks particularly to the Giant Body exercises. It was the first part of the statement that had my mind looking cross-eyed, or cross-minded, if you will, i.e., appearance makes space manifest. That’s not a statement I normally assume as accurate, it’s usually the reverse that I expect to be the case (space manifesting appearance), yet when I examine experience I can verify it. So I decided to combine part of Ex. A with KTS Ex 48 – Space Communication, and focus on the different senses, and how stimuli is presented to aware space – considered as a sensing ‘field‘.
Shifting focus to the sense of touch, I felt what was against my skin, and that opened the space to observe it, but also interior sensations relating to breathing in the chest, the nostrils, and the buoyancy of fresh, oxygenated blood in the head on the inhale, and also a vibrancy in the body, and an overall warmth and feeling of pleasure, noticing all that opened a space to observe it. Feeling seemed to be a dominant field for which a basic sense of self is linked. The space of this field seemed to expand with the more I noticed. The tactile sense seemed to be a massive field.
Shifting focus to listening, I became attentive to the ambient hum of the circulating fan pushing conditioned air through the ducts, but then a sound in the distance (a vehicle) seemed to provide the feel of expanding my sense of self beyond my physical body and the room, as if sounding out the limits of the capacity of the auditory field. So there too, appearance made space manifest. I noticed how with a distant sound, space expanded even the sense of a felt self. The fields overlapped. Sound does expand space, and extends into a tactile field as well as the auditory field.
Shifting focus to the sense of taste, I observed this field lies waiting at a certain level until the appearance of flavor opens the space of the field to allow for a level of fullness that particular flavors may warrant. Like taste, the sense of smell awaits activation (not unlike encountering a blank) through the appearance of a scent to manifest the space of its field.
Shifting focus to the sense of sight, there’s a tendency to narrow focus on objects, unless I’m mindful of limiting, but if I open focus on the field of vision, as I do, more space manifests or co-emerges along with more of what is happening visually as well as in other overlapping fields of sound and touch.
These 5 sense fields open within a 6th encompassing field of glowing or luminous awareness that includes various forms, such as thoughts, meanings, and images, and perhaps this is the field that allows overlapping. I viewed this, as the readings describe, as a dynamic interacting, interpenetrating, and interdependent field within which I have range of focus. That focus may fluctuate anywhere from the fundamentals of experience, along the tendency to consolidate, to proliferate, and to spiral toward complexification through the steady arising of new events in time. However, the tendency to consolidate around self and positions habituates a narrowing focus, unless allowed to open through inquiry.
David
