Knowing the Subject

I was doing the first exercise from the class 5 recording. Here’s what i found: The sense of the subject-object structure is present because of a reflexive movement of thought, a kind of continual looping movement out and back  At this ‘level’ of knowing, if I try to verify the existence of anything, I kind of create it at the same time. This is where the ‘subject’ operates (and originates?).
Then, I tried to account for something else, but here my words are more tentative: there is another ‘level.’ Step one. What could I say about it was my next step. And here I ran into the same level-one problem, that by trying to ‘know’ it with looping, reflexive movement of knowing, I ‘created’ it. Wow! That’s tricky. “And yet I know it, somehow,” I thought, in some way that makes me want to use the word ‘prior’ (but in a provisional sense only, not really, at this stage, in a temporal sense.).
Then, the first somewhat satisfactory word I could find, for this level of knowing was “energy.” I didn’t know what that meant, but it seemed to fit. (This ‘energy’ level of knowing, seems to inform the looping movement, which means the reflexive level doesn’t really go ‘out’ at all, but seems to work with this primary kind of ‘energy’. ‘Out’ looks like it might be created by this movement.)
As I attuned to the ‘energy’-style knowing, I realised that I could know it through the ‘feel’ of its presence, and (if this wasn’t already  my second satisfactory description-word, then…) this gave me my second word which fits: ‘direct.’  Again, I don’t know exactly what that means at root, but it feels like the right word. In going to explore some more, before I say more.

I can say that there’s a ‘direct’ kind of knowing (and the word ‘implicit’ might work in some way, here, too?) , and there’s the ‘reflexive’ kind of subject-object-knowing, but I can’t say that objects happen on this latter ‘direct’ level (it appears not), so I’m not ready to say what kind of ‘subject’ happens there, if at all.

As I write this, I realize that the direct kind of knowing might account for how I can say confidently that the first (looping) kind of knowing actually happens (independent of the looping-knowing’s self-validating quirkiness).

Enough. Thanks all.
– Christopher.

 

About Christopher

I first read TSK in 1978, and have enjoyed exploring Rinpoche's (printed) work ever since. I'm an insight meditation teacher in Sydney, Australia, and I live in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. I'm also a psychotherapist and a Focusing trainer (Gendlin).
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1 Response to Knowing the Subject

  1. Christopher McLean says:

    Postscript: I’ve noticed, that if I’m not aware of what I am calling the reflexive level, I easily find myself in (scenarios/narratives/object relations/what people call ‘distraction.’) Awake to the subject-making, less of that.

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