View from the Porch 9-15-18 by David Filippone
TSK Exercise 19 – Past, Present and Future of Each Moment
Sit quietly and remain sensitive to all thoughts, feelings, sensations. You may eventually be able to see a past and a future tinge to all your lived present moments. Each ordinary present has a subtle PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE STRUCTURE to it that provides a feeling of PERSONAL IDENTITY, CONTINUITY, and DIRECTION.
Doing the exercise in class with fellow students, I looked up from my laptop computer and out the window… white butterflies caught my eye dotting and hopping just above the tall grasses. I noticed the multilayered field… lines of white tipped grasses followed by tan and brown tipped grasses. And the colored grasses stretched out to the distant tree line like a far off shore. I took in all the colors like a sea of green, and became aware of how much I enjoyed the view. Then I remembered how I derive pleasure just watching the sea at the edge of the beach… Then I became aware how I incorporated the past remembrance into the present experience. I also began to describe the view to myself… in a discursive way of thinking, and realized I intended to write about this experience in the future. I saw how I triangulated between me, the past, and the future… in a habitual way… establishing myself here in the present, within the feel of me. I saw the ‘tinge’ of past and future in my current experience.
By seeing that, space seemed to open, or my focal setting expanded, and I saw/felt deeper, more intimate layers of ‘meaning making’. Making meaning seemed to be happening, like the layers of colors in the field, well below surface descriptions… there was an emotional flow of warm enjoyment… becoming aware of the emotions, the ‘tinges’ of past and future time in my immediate observations, just seemed to allow for a more encompassing experience. I understood how the descriptive words, while used now in thought, came from the past, I saw how my story of this experience was narrowed by the telling… funneled into a useful order for communicating to others. I saw how I was triangulating with time… fixing my self-location in the middle of the experience, and letting go in little increments. Tiny timed-out openings to gather within, for making parsed out meanings… to tell the story of my practice.
