Whoops! I let that last post get rather long. Here is another.
Louise, this is a very personal situation, so I don’t have much to say. Does it look different if you look in terms of stories? Yours? His? Your reaction to his? Your reaction to yours? I don’t mean to intellectualize this; just to steer you (us) away from single-minded knowing.
David, when you write that you’re “enthralled with making meaning by matching stories,” it makes me wonder: Is there perhaps too much enjoyment of the stories? Or is what enthralls you the freedom from stories (even though that sounds paradoxical)?Something like that is suggested by the last line of your post: “I become the space the stories seem to flow within.”
By the way, for those of you who read that line and say, “Boy, I never become space!” and get discouraged, let me suggest this (though of course I can’t speak for David): sometimes it is just the hint of a glimpse of a possibility. It can sound so much more emphatic when you put it into words!
Jack
Yes, I was sure you were sensitive to the double sense of ‘enthralled’. The reasons I sometimes suggest ‘pulling back’ a little is partly for your sake and partly because I think your posts can be intimidating for others, who say to themselves: “Gee, I never have experiences like that.” That was also the reason for my observation, which you confirm below, that you are speaking of ‘glimpses’. We had an exchange about this last quarter also.
Hi Jack,
Yes, I agree. By the statement, “enthralled with making meaning by matching stories,” I meant the near hypnotized fascination with the movement (the progression and momentum) of discovering meaning, by recognizing patterns that match with past experience. And yes, I agree, it becomes ‘too much’. There are two connotations of ‘enthrall’, one is to ‘enslave’, to be a prisoner of my stories, as it were. The other is to ‘deligh’t, in this case, over the freedom I discover when I am no longer enslaved by my own self-limiting narrative.
Also, I did not mean to sound as if I walk in the space of presence as a normal occurrence. Thanks to TSK practice these openings ‘are’ a glimpse that become more available.
Best wishes,
David