Checking in at week’s end

It’s been a busy week, and I haven’t had a chance to review all that’s been posted till now (including a few posts at the end of last week.) I also did not present the exercises in the guidance section, though you can find them by scrolling down a ways in this section. Anyway, here are some thoughts and reactions, though I won’t try to comment on everything.

Arthur mentions in his post a week ago that he has been doing a lot of self-created exercises. I would like to encourage everyone to do that. Actually, we don’t have much choice: when we do the exercise, we do it in our way and with our experience. From there it’s only a small step to let a question turn into an exercise, or at least a moment of immediate inquiry. And then there “a little smell of the possibilities,” as Karin writes.

Erin, I’m glad you decided to take the plunge and write a post. I liked your image of mountains as ripples that have been pushed toward the sky. It suggests that in some way space contains time, and that is an interesting possibility to explore. For instance, as I write, I feel tired, and have in mind that I will have to get up early tomorrow morning and drive for a few hours. Do these two experiences (backward-looking sense of ‘tired’ and forward-looking sense of task) ‘take up’ or ‘fill’ space? Can I let go of those temporal distances. Yes, at least, a little, I can.

Louise, you make the good point that relating to space affects how we relate to objects. Since I’ve started in on the theme of being tired, I’ll point out that when this is my mindset, it seems to fill up space in such a way that I cannot relate very well to what is going on in my experience. But what is the alternative? No point in pretending not to be tired: that is like adding another layer. But ‘tired’ can be one element of experience that I related to, rather than a coating that makes all experience more dull. At least, that’s what I’m experimenting with as I write.

I’ll continue with a second post.

Jack