We are staying with the same exercises this week, which makes me glad, since people are going into the exercises well. I really appreciate how active you are being in responding to one another. That is what makes this program come alive.
 In the readings, we move on to chapter 14 of LOK. I notice that people most respond to the reading by working with a particular phrase, which seems like a good way to do it. For me, a good phrase to start with this week is in the first paragraph: “a continuing isolation from direct experience.” In any moment (for instance, now, as I am writing) I can look at whether I am isolated from direct experience. (And of course, it’s a matter of degree.) The act of looking almost automatically takes me close to experience. And then I can ask: What is the difference between before (more isolated) and now (more engaged)? And how is it related to the distinction between subject and object? Reflecting on this leads directly to the key statement on p. 112: “Investigating polar knowledge means asking whether we are free.”
Paragraph 3 of the reading has so much substance that we could spend the rest of the course on it (but we won’t). Reading it in light of the issue of isolation that I just raised, the point seems to be that describing experience cuts us off from experience, but so does the polar structure that we presuppose as the foundation for experiencing itself. Then too there is the momentary structure of time. But perhaps that is too much for one post.
The analysis is chapter 14 is delightful (if you like that sort of thing). But we might want to stop for a moment and ask where it might be leading us. What does this kind of logic have to do with a different way of knowing? The very fact that we have to ask says something about how strongly we have split our heads off from the rest of our experience. But here is an image: this kind of questioning is like the picadors who soften up the flesh of the bull with lances before the bullfighter (the matador, literally, “the killer”) goes into action. I apologize for the brutality of the image, but perhaps it is helpful.
Jack
The many faces and power of “I”
I experienced it with exercise LOK,9. Much space – and then there came thoughts like tanks. And with them my mood changed to negativity. The same changings, when I didn´t get the money, I had expected (property and safety) and when friends seem to make better spiritual progress than I (envy) ….. There is much to do. Going with TSK, may be fighting, may be melting, may be listening…
Peter.
A spontaneous reaction:
May be I shirk out (ich drücke mich) of fighting and of killing. And my experiences with TSK are very limited.
How to work with TSK?
“Love of knowledge” has (for me) a bright and warm aura. It sounds like melting something, melting the frozen water. Fighting very often leads to counterpression, resistance and escalation.
I told it earlier: sometimes I (?) feel love with my I (?), self; it helped to live until today, to work with TSK. And my hope: it may be superfluous, again and again.
Peter