Even Dots Ripple…

Photo: DOTS by InspiredImages – Pixabay
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“Usually when we describe experience, we say experience requires time to happen. Theoretically, that’s true. But I’m not so sure. My feeling is something shows up ‘inside time’. You could speak in terms of the appearance of dots. The dots themselves may be external to time; perhaps you could say they manifest in space. Those dots are what produce labels and guarantee concrete manifestations. Timing may be a part of that reality, but time itself is not involved with bringing it into being. There are particles, and form takes shape, and there are external transitions. Timing is part of the calculation. But it is based on names and labels, not on a timing dynamic.”
‘Dimensions of Mind’, Tarthang Tulku, p.262

In ‘Dynamics of Time and Space’, Exercise 13 – Commanding Time, the exercise allows for a way of inhabiting time that invites more openness into each moment. At first, while becoming calm you may notice “each moment goes by before there is a chance for experience to deepen”. Then after a while, this tightness loosens, “making the richness of experience more fully available”. If you are in a painful situation, you might notice that pain stretches out…At this point I find more space available between throbbing physical pain, and other things going on beside torment… or in the event of the emotional pain of loss, those thoughts that feed into, stoking and intensifying the hurt, begin to disconnect their links…revealing more space and other possibilities.

Even if pain is not the current situation, but instead, just a tightly focused mind…looking up and breathing deeply can begin a new perspective, a lightening of a heavy focus, a buoying, expansive freshness imbues time…

“As knowledge becomes available, time itself becomes more accommodating and more allowing of knowledge and energy. Present experience becomes an occasion for insight: knowledge in application. The ‘line’ of experience reappears, imbued with knowledge.”

DOTS Between points of conventional time

“…As we move in time, we have access to knowledge that would otherwise be hidden ‘between’ points of conventional time, as suggested by the small dots in the figure. If we consider each of these ‘dots’ as occupying a specific time and space of its own, we can say that each dot can be opened as well.

The shift suggested in this way only approximates the transformation in the temporal rhythm. Time as it manifests in the ‘space between moments’ could be said in a quite precise sense to have become ‘pointless’. Experientially, this means that each moment is alive with a flowing energy. The familiar rhythm of time continues to unfold, but we are now ‘in’ time and can know and act inwardly. Future possibilities persist, but do not insist that they exist.” p.300-1

The discussion of ‘dots’ in conjunction with appearance also reminded me of the discussion in ‘Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space’, in which we are invited to: “Imagine that each point in time requires 16 transition points to reach completion.” I am imagining dots of 16s proliferating everywhere, like dust glittering in the still air in shafts of sunlight…luminous moments between moments…

There is an experience that corresponds to using the benchmark term ‘dots’. I remember describing them as ‘energy bits’ or basic ‘data’ I felt feeding in from my various senses. It feels something like ‘granular particles’ that make experience feel as though at a quantum level, to borrow a physics metaphor…very difficult to describe a flowing internal event, which also points to ‘dots’ showing up more in space, than IN conventional time.

Anyway, what do I know…I watch intently…peer into the dark horizon of my own being…it is a happy mystery just to be looking… Inside the drops in the photo shown above…the background is reflected, rippling out…in all directions…being in the ripple…