Unit Two – LOK Ex. 5; TSK Ex 7; Supplementary LOK Ex. xxvii

These notes deal with Jack’s expanded explanations regarding self and I.  I took self to be a narrow perspective and I to be the knowing capacity that can take perspectives. [In the comments below, Jack points out that this is not specifically a TSK view, but at the time, for my inquiry and level of understanding, it helped me develop a certain level of discernment.]

Regards,  David

LOK Exercise 5 – Disowning Tension –
I have noticed while engaging in the other exercises in this unit that when an insight is revealed, not necessarily through logic or deduction, but when an insight or understanding seems to come in a flash, there is a strong pulling tendency to grab that knowledge, the way a rock-climber reaches out and grabs firmly to pull himself to the next level. 

That tendency manifests in me in an immediate rush to narrate to myself a summary of this new insight, as if the self is laying claim to this new higher ground of knowing.  When I observed myself in the act of doing this, space and time seemed to open, and I embraced this tendency right from the root of my childhood ways and attitudes.  I saw myself as I did when I was a child attempting to tame or master my environment, reaching for things, manipulating things, controlling my world as it expanded, right along with my expanding skills of manipulation. 

Through the focus of the exercise I got a taste of that wider, more encompassing perspective that includes the self limiting act of consolidating knowledge, but also the wider space of being aware I was doing it, as I did it.

TSK Exercise 7 – Body-Mind-Thought Interplay –
I want to use this experience because I applied TSK Exercise 7, to this interaction and observed the psycho-physical embodiment.
I was thinking about a response to someone on a thread I was composing on a particular internet Forum.  As I thought about my response, which dealt with examining ourselves and our psychological defenses, and what is required to unearth them, I was remembering my own childhood.  Some of the thoughts and images that bubbled up were of a painful nature.  I realized that in a sense I was reliving some of the emotional content those memories contained, as my eyes began to tear up, and I felt a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach area that was an associative empty and hollow contraction.  The memory content involved my child’s sense of not measuring up to parental expectations, thus resulting in my having a low sense of self esteem.
Those thoughts and feelings then led to a current understanding in that moment of how innocent that child was.  The current constellation or sense of me merged with the memory of that less complex child-self, as if there was no separation in time or distance, and there was a feeling of great warmth and love.  I was that child, as if I were my own son, and not a pitiful person to be embarrassed about or ashamed of.  That child’s innocence was in some sense like the innocence of a puppy, single minded in its desire to play, to please, and to be appreciated, whether or not those desires were met.  The embodied feeling of love for that innocence in me, in the current moment, was felt in my chest, much larger than just the heart area, and my eyes were stinging.

Afterwards, I looked back on that scenario and was struck with how alive the past can be, and how normally I objectified it and assumed it was gone, but in a very real sense there was no distance between then and now.  From beginnings to now, Space just opened and allowed Time to reveal a whole.  The me’s of then and now simply fell away, a more embodied and fundamental knowing seemed to be operating.

Supplementary LOK Ex. xxvii –
Recently, I told a friend and scholar I had difficulty keeping up with some of his writing, however, I didn’t say it as straight forward as that.  Instead, I jokingly made reference to his twelve cylinder mind compared to my four cylinder mind.  I realized later that couching my difficulty in that language contained a hidden judgment.  The judgment developed from a pattern that grew from a subtle fixed position I took up many years ago about myself.  Something was nagging at me about the exchange with my friend that I couldn’t quite catch, but it was this exercise that allowed me to hone in on the process.

First of all, the cylinder/horsepower metaphor was a little polarizing, implying bright at one end and dull at the other.  It expressed at least an implied judgment about me that I was not as bright as I should be.  That idea is a pattern of thinking I recognized as having reappeared in my life numerous times.  Once I recognized the pattern of this repetitive judgment about myself that seemed to arise whenever I had to mentally stretch in order to understand, I was able to trace its origin back to a childhood fixed position.  Without going too deeply into the specifics here, it should be sufficient to say that I lived in a strict parental environment in which measuring up to my father was required but felt by my child’s mind to be impossible.   Hence, the idea of not being as intelligent as I should began there, and was a reinforced perception, until it became a pattern of behaving as if I was less intelligent.

It would be more realistic, and a more open stance regarding my scholarly friend, to say that he is mentally gifted, and rather than comparing minds, I could simply expend some effort and enjoy learning what I’m able of what he may offer, and be warmly appreciative of our relationship.  That way I will not have limited ‘knowing’ in advance by a self-imposed fixed position, allowed to repeat as a pattern, often enough to become a subtle judgment, about my limits for knowing.  Or perhaps more simply stated: A personal value judgment left unchallenged tends to perpetuate itself, affecting how one thinks, lives, and perceives the world.  And it has recently dawned on me that is exactly what I allowed to happen until I challenged that value judgment.