{"id":36,"date":"2006-10-01T20:23:05","date_gmt":"2006-10-02T03:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/2006\/10\/01\/unit-one-introduction\/"},"modified":"2012-12-08T11:37:27","modified_gmt":"2012-12-08T19:37:27","slug":"unit-one-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"Unit One: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, let me encourage everyone to read the Orientation in When It Rains<\/em>. I do strongly encourage you to keep a Journal. Your online comments and questions could be a supplement to the journal, or could grow out of the Journal.<\/p>\n

In thinking about how to introduce the program, I starting thinking of how many people hesitate to\u00c2\u00a0really go into TSK.\u00c2\u00a0Often there is\u00c2\u00a0some fear–a sense that they won’t understand, or won’t be able to do the exercises. On the other hand, some people think that TSK will be too intellectual; that it won’t address their lived experience.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0Of course, all of you have overcome those hurdles, so I won’t dwell on those problems. Just be aware that this first unit\u00c2\u00a0should help you start to feel friendly toward the vision, and to realize that the vision in turn\u00c2\u00a0is\u00c2\u00a0very “user friendly,” once you give it a chance.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

When people hesitate to engage the vision, this could be taken as a sign that the wrong understanding of time, space, and knowledge is in operation. One key to TSK is that time and space and knowledge are all active forces. Time is not just a measurement that counts out the hours; space is not just an inert medium that keeps things from bumping into one another, and knowledge is not just a possession, something to accumulate and then put to use. Put more simply, time, space, and knowledge are alive, and their aliveness is our aliveness. The more we wake up to being alive, the more we are in touch with being alive.<\/p>\n

Time, Space, and Knowledge constantly surprise us. Here is a small example. Soon after When It Rains<\/em> was published, I led a workshop in Oregon that was based on it. Planning for the workshop, I read paragraphs 2-4 on p. 14 of the manual. The idea in those paragraphs is that I as the writer could not know anything about you as the reader, and that this not-knowing raises some interesting questions about time, identity, and so on. But now, reading those paragraphs, I suddenly found myself in the situation of being both the writer and<\/em> the reader. It was a real shock: completely different from what I was imagining when I first wrote the words. That shock was itself a TSK teaching, a realization that identity was more fluid than I imagined.<\/p>\n

I want to call your attention to the suggestion\u00c2\u00a0on the\u00c2\u00a0bottom of\u00c2\u00a0p. 15 that you ask yourself about your motivation in doing this program. This would be an interesting topic to explore in our online discussion here. Another possibility would be to include your reflections on when you post an entry in the “meet the participants” discussion topic (you’ll hear more about this soon).<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0Here is another point that will be very important as we move into the program. It comes from p. xix of KTS, at the top of the page: “If what is being read does not emerge as a fundamental theme in the ongoing practice of daily life, the project of our inquiry has not been taken fully to heart.”<\/p>\n

Please take that idea to heart. Those of you taking part in this program are spread all over the world (5-6 countries, I believe). So you will have to find your own way to activate what you are studying. The best way is exactly this: to make the questions we explore “fundamental themes” in your daily life.<\/p>\n

One way to do that is with the “Expanding and Condensing Exercise.” This is an exercise you can do anywhere (but be careful if you’re driving or operating other powerful machinery!) That would be one way to activate the theme of inquiry in your daily life. Of course, noticing patterns and inquiring into them is another way.<\/p>\n

I think that’s enough for starters. You already have plenty to read. I am not going to comment on the exercises: that will come as you begin to report on your experience.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0Please don’t hesitate to ask questions, even if they feel tentative; even if you are not sure what you want to ask. We want to get an active discussion going and that is the only way I know to do it.<\/p>\n

Note: There is a typographic error on page 20, second full paragraph, last line: It should read “spective of<\/em> the TSK vision.”<\/p>\n

Jack<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, let me encourage everyone to read the Orientation in When It Rains. I do strongly encourage you to keep a Journal. Your online comments and questions could be a supplement to the journal, or could grow out of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-01_general","category-tsk-online-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}