Last week I was watching for ‘bewilderment in the background‘ and noticed it before some decisions, also at the beginning of trying to figure out something. This ‘unsureness’ or unknowing seems to be part of the process of consolidating, a way of aggregating around my decision to do something that I’m not clear how to get or avoid, where it involves multiple options or projections through a linear series of imagined actions. Its arising seems to be context dependant and part of the process of contextualizing self and other (temporal knowing), by setting up polarities (my judgments of good or bad for me or others in the situation).
The not-knowing may be distance itself that I set in place when I distinguish something other than the me around which I contextualize, and between the now and then I think I inhabit. It seems to be a lack, sometimes confusing, sometimes frustrating, a gap that other sensual information and emotion can rise within, but it may also be happily open and welcoming. Based on what I’m feeling, confusion, frustration, or wonder seem to be at one end where ‘I’ as controlling-self attempt to orchestrate the unfolding of time, and toward the other side of this polar divide is less confusion and frustration and more open welcoming of the object without any orchestration by a self, as I seem to dissolve into it. There can be a swoop feeling as distance between the poles of self and object seems to unite as the self relinquishes its separative influence. There may not actually be another side of the divide but it seems like a useful way to articulate the feeling.
This points to, and the readings seem to confirm, a self that is different in some way than the subject, for through the self’s efforts to consolidate it separates, setting itself up as if it were the subject in opposition to objects, and that establishes particularity that seems to allow it to maintain subjective history. But if the self can dissolve into the object in presence, then where does the object reside? It seems to rise and pass away in a knowing subject that is much more inclusive and encompassing than just the orchestrating self that separates and remembers. So it seems the broader knowing subject includes within it a particularizing tendency, a self that pushes to control based on the history it has stored, searching through a space of not-knowing that it creates as it aggregates, in a search for knowing it already possesses in some way.
Considering the glow of a cactus blossom or even a candle flame flickering in darkness, I might take the glow as a derived quality of a more basic or elemental aspect of the flower or flame. Like an aura, it is a distinctive atmosphere, and perhaps a subjective sensation, surrounding the object. To use the flower or flame as a metaphor for myself in the context of this exercise, the glow might represent my derived self-identity, its brightness and composition a more structured reflection of a deeper and more elemental ignition or subjectivity, a knowing not owned by a self.
I try again to observe the uncut corn in the field, now having lost all its green so late in the season. The sun peeks out and the stalks glow golden as a thousand sparrows sway and glide like dark flecks above their tips. All is movement, in and out, both inside and out. It seems I can separate from the scene and focus, or include everything with it, as well my tendency to particularize, as I swoop and sweep in presence like the sparrows.
David
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