I often seem to be better at recognizing time, space, and knowing in meditative silence than I am working with them in my daily life, even though there has been improvement over time. Some of this has to do with better understanding of the readings and working with the exercises.
When I first worked with an exercise similar to this one, it resulted in a meditative experience, in which I seemed to open to the present and sort of leaned toward the future, something like leaning into a black wind. I realize there was a positioning from which to observe, but gradually that position and occupancy seemed to dissolve, and there was what seemed to be forms appearing that I cannot identify well with words. They were very basic and may not have been objects, but rather, a bursting of basic sensual events. If I take a position it might be like standing under a streetlight in the dead of night in a heavy snowstorm. There was illumination of space and moving events, but beyond what I could see of them was the dark night of the future — the allowing unknown. The most compelling essence of the experience was that ‘I am this knowing of time, and the unknown’. I was so struck by this vision that I tried to represent it visually (here) and (here). The objects are just symbols on a two dimensional plane without movement, but I wanted to try and show the medium of knowing as almost viscous and glowing in several ways despite this lack of movement, as if it were a snap shot.
I understand my description and the visual suggestion are just interpretations of an experience that has passed. I also understand how a ‘single-minded knowing’ derived from this unusual experience tends to anchor a self-identity to its founding story.
The hard part, or the thing I often fail to remember to do, is to open daily linear moments to the allowing unknown, and to let the future transmit its open potential, so that I’m less committed to the limits of a linear progression. An example of when I do remember to trust in the future unknown is when I have to do something that I fear I will fail at publicly. As a manager before retiring, I often had to speak in public forums, or on my own initiative meet local public officials. I was always secretly fearful I would embarrass myself somehow. I created images of failure so that I could fear them. It’s when I opened to the unknown and trusted in the allowing future that I faced these fearful situations. I learned that none of the images I feared ever actually happened, which allowed me to trust more fully in the next situation I faced.
Perhaps the more fundamental meditative experience of time’s presentation helped me be more open in those types of situations. I sense in some way it did.
David
