Photo courtesy of: ‘Constellations’ – Pixabay
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Early on in my TSK studies one of the important exercises for understanding space, the knowing process, and loosening assumptions about the ‘weighty’ and fixed ideas of self & identity was The Giant Body exercises. Later, I found The Cycle of Seeing exercise also powerful in unraveling my structuring process of the ‘temporal order’. These exercises have been gifts that continue to open, like trees that produce memorable fruits, which in time yield more. During the current course, I worked with memories and saw how they were structured as summaries, a way to ‘short-hand’ mental activity in order to move on to the next point in time while relating this to that, and then to now, in a strategic intentional way while navigating through the time and space of my life.
With The Cycle of Seeing exercise we are asked to think of a list of ten ‘things’, (objects, qualities, and other common contents of experience, such as a car, an orange, a piece of music, a tactile quality, etc.), to remember them, then throughout the day recall them in sequence, in effect spin them in memory. Sounds simple enough, right? Ha ha! :-) It is such a clever implementation of a ‘constellation‘ of thoughts, because each ‘thing’ involves a subset of choices, and a deeper subset of assumptions. Each assumption builds and relates to others, each judgment relates to a choice that also relates, in turn, to others. Each ‘thing’ involves a net of relationships. Eventually, you choose your 10 ‘things’, spinning them as you go in order to commit them to memory.
At some point you may realize you have created a cosmos of ‘things’, your own little spinning Galaxy… held in relationship by a centrifugal force held by spinning, held together by the gravity of a logos that you have mostly unconsciously structured. You can actually observe this, because you can get really good at spinning your Galaxy, you get a little distance from it in your mind, you might even get a little cocky about how good you are at recalling these things and keeping your constellation spinning! I recall doing just that.
And then… just like with The Giant Body exercises when suddenly solid things become transparent, so too with The Cycle of Seeing exercise… the tight structuring, the judgments, the value systems you employed [the invisible glue], and why you unconsciously made all these decisions becomes ‘wobbly.’ As it spins, the distance I imputed from my spinning became intermittent, gravity let go, and the tightly compact spinning Galaxy started to unravel… because you see with intimate eyes. You see with a more encompassing knowing, a kind of zero openness or transparency of what you did and why you did it. It can be a poignant and profound moment, an ‘ah ha’ moment! Great fun! :-)
If interested, here’s what I wrote back in 2009… a little more detailed and specific…
TSK Ex. 28 – A Cycle of Seeing
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