Unit Thirteen: The Story of the Self

Hello everyone,

This week we start the last part of the program. There has been some confusion about when we start, for which I accept full responsibility. We go to Unit 13 this week, then continue on through June 17, which takes us through Unit 17. I have decided to add a final week for Unit 18, since that gives a sense of closure to the program. Kathleen will be sending everyone an email about this.

 The retreat is still scheduled for July 8-14. If any of you haven’t made up your minds on whether to take the treat, it may be of interest to know that having just finished a related program, I am very excited about trying a new approach on the retreat. I see us as doing TSK inquiry in a more focused and precise way, with a clear structure.

 Now, about Unit 13. The focus on the self that comes with this unit and continues over the next several weeks is actually very inviting. One of the things about TSK that some people find difficult is that it does not pay that much attention to the self: it puts time, space, and knowledge at the center instead. But here we are looking at the self: its structure, its dynamic, etc. We can afford to do this because by this point in our study of TSK, we have the background we need to see through stories. If we focused too strongly on stories at the outset, we would just fall into psychology.

 I strongly recommend working with DTS in this unit. Again, the focus on the story level is naturally inviting. As we come to see the story as a story, we also become aware of the lived dimensions of what is happening in our experience.

 Let me be more precise about this point. If you relax and let the mind go, the natural tendency is for stories to unfold. Some may be driven by emotions (e.g., anxiety), but others are just more or less dreamy: images that drift through the mind. As we let these stories form and shift and change, we gain access to our experience in a more global way, and things we don’t ordinarily notice become available: vague feelings, precise sensations, and so on. All this is very liberating.

Arthur has already posted something about his experiences with this unit and the exercises. He starts with the experience of stories as reasons, explanations, justifications, and so on. These are the most narrow and rigid stories, and if we fall into them, our experience is narrow and rigid as well. But there is a much more open way to get into stories, which is what Arthur begins to experience.

Jack