Photo courtesy of: Cape May Beach, NJ by Chuck 893 – Flickr
http://tinyurl.com/je9ra9b
Our teacher says, “…‘space shifting’ does not only happen when we enter the world of a dream; it is ongoing. A good example is what happens when I remember a past event. If we don’t look closely, we tend to assume that when we remember, we stay firmly situated ‘here’, in the present, looking back at the past event as though looking through a telescope. That may indeed happen, but it seems more common that I ‘inhabit’ my memory; in other words, I enter its space (though this ‘memory space’ is not the same as the space of the remembered event).
As a practice, please investigate for yourself whether and in what way this is so.â€
It seems to me we have numerous experiences of space between a continuum of physical space and mental space. What matters it appears is how we ‘know’ space. Sometimes I think it makes sense to think of space as many kinds of allowing bubbles held together by a kind of surface tension, like the way a drop coheres until it evaporates or merges with a larger body of itself. The ‘surface tensions’ are our related concerns, interpretations, and identities about this and that… our stories that channel or narrow experience, closing down avenues while at the same time shaping them. Thinking of space this way makes it easier for me to envision space as a field, containing ‘things’, which as science tells us are themselves fields…fields within fields within fields. Bubbles within bubbles within bubbles…
I have a vivid memory of time spent on the beach in the sun surrounded by the clamor and commotion of adults laughing, children running and playing, the cacophony of waves and cawing of seagulls, the feel of the heat of the sun on my skin, cooled by blustering breezes…the feel of me ‘inside’…the strained-engine sound of an airplane pulling a banner into the wind…all and more within the space of a blue-domed sky…
There were the spaces of how I felt, the listening space of all the things I heard, the visual space of colors, the space of the scent of sea and sun tan lotion…the space of thoughts about my experience, the space of related ideas and images that arose triggered by everything…
The experiential space of NOW is not the same space and time within which I actually was present back then. However, the mental space in which I interpret and know contains the interpretive spaces of back then…I am that living, knowing space. The ‘experience’ of the blue-domed sky that I remember is different from my experience of blue-dome sky now…if for no other reason than experience back then only held memories up until that moment in time. Blue-dome sky experience NOW includes memories ‘since’ that day on the beach, plus everything has changed, including my current location, where the Earth is in space in relation to planets, galaxies to galaxies, and on and on…space within space, made up of space…nesting space bubbles…
