Observing myself in different situations, as Rinpoche suggests: “Observe the complex interrelationship between sensations, ‘mind’, thoughts, emotions, and body which constitutes ‘you in that situation’”
This TSK exercise (#7) has been powerful for me. Taking up the suggestion to become aware of ‘partitions,’ the exercise opened up an awareness of ‘surfaces and partitions’ between various domains – e.g., between a body and a mind; between different parts of the body; and also between disowned experiences and the disowning ‘me’ that identified itself as ‘the mind.’ Naturally, the less cathected boundaries tended to dissolve into spaciousness easier than some others.
I discovered different kinds of ‘disowned’ experiences which were ‘partitioned’ off. For example, I could simply be resisting some unpleasant outward sense-experience, or I resisted experiences internal to me, either bodily or mental experiences. As a result, I have to question, with this observation, what this ‘me-mind’ is, a mind that has separated itself off from unpleasant experiences within a broader mental field, and lays claim to being more core.
As I stayed with this new discovery over a couple of hours, it opened into an experience of embodied trauma. At one stage while lying down I experienced a sense of a ‘central energy-column’ within me, compacted severely from both top and bottom – the experience, it seemed, of a powerless consciousness compressed into a contracted space. The contractions in the body were very strong in this trauma-based experience. I was as kind as I could be to myself in this condition. If it happens again, it might be worth exploring the ‘surfaces’ at the top and bottom.
– Christopher
