Photo: ‘Unstructuring’ by Alexas_Fotos – Pixabay
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LOK Ex 13 – Inventing the Past
Focus on the memory of a specific event, either ‘routine’ or emotionally charged. Trace the future that developed out of that remembered event. Experiment with ways to ‘strip away’ this future, for example, by ‘transporting yourself’ directly to the past event, or by making the same journey sequentially, ‘dropping’ subsequent memories as you go. In doing the exercise, also pay attention to the evidence meant to validate the accuracy of what is remembered.
…’Love of Knowledge’, by Tarthang Tulku, p. 107
My Practice Notes –
Remembering back 17 years ago to my retirement from managing large commercial facilities, and the future that led to today, just sitting on the back porch looking out over the Spring field revealing new growth… I am recalling all that ensued. And I begin to strip away the unfolding events since retiring that led up to this moment. I see it all as a structuring of events, associations and judgments put together… a formulation of my own making. If I let it all go, [the whole ball of yarn, the tapestry of stories upon stories, and so on…] I feel weightless, my story of unfolding self dissolves into a full but buoyant freedom in the present moment… sensitive and healing space… open at the edge of the future…
I’ve also been reading Love of Knowledge, prompted by Jack’s intention to base his next TSK outing on that book. In the Preface, Rinpoche presents this book as an exploration of the TSK vision that is a more basic introducion than the original TSK book published a decade earlier. I can feel the truth of that, as I read through its chapters. But at the same time, in giving more space to the ordinary life I am living, whatever the spiritual visions and aspirations that sometimes bear fruit on a good day, I’m finding that Love of Knowledge is what I need at this juncture in my life. It is fully commensurate with my fledgling forays into the edges of a more open space, a less driven time, and a more luminous knowing.
In the practice you share, I appreciate that a choice is given between diving into the past and swimming back to the surface of the present and starting on the surface and embarking on a journey into memory in the more familiar way of remembering. In that choice, I can feel the presence of time in both the past and the present, and in the capacity of mind to not remain completely stuck in either one.