Not having an immediate pressing problem in mind, at first I tried just viewing objects in my environment as symbols of a higher space.\u00c2\u00a0 Taking a walk outside, my attention was drawn to autumn leaves skittering across the ground and drifting through the air.\u00c2\u00a0 What happens if I don’t take these leaves for granted but as symbols of higher space?\u00c2\u00a0 What would this mean?\u00c2\u00a0 Looking at the leaves in this way, I noticed that they seemed to express and embody for me a mode of knowing: a certain type of knowing seemed to “be” that higher space, in this case a knowing which allowed for space and object and inter-object differentiations.\u00c2\u00a0 Reflecting on this, I found I wasn’t sure I could take this insight seriously (that this knowing was the higher space), but it was still suggestive to me, since the question to see things as “symbols” already seemed to be pointing in the direction of knowingness.\u00c2\u00a0 Symbols are different from signs, in that symbols embody the meaning while signs point outside of themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 While I do not embrace an idealist worldview, this reflection still inspired me to see the leaves as they danced around me as (sacramental) embodiments of a mode of knowing: not reducing the leaves metaphysically to external expressions of godlike knowingness, but seeing the leaves-as-they-appeared-to-me in this way.<\/p>\n
Starting this exercise, I did not have a specific problem to work on, but I found the leaves, which were wholly different from the space in which they moved, “resolved” in a mode of knowing in which space-and-object co-arise and co-determine.\u00c2\u00a0 Phenomenologically, this felt like a movement that covered no ground or distance — like walking with your eyes closed, so there is a sense of dynamism but no sense of going anywhere.<\/p>\n
Thinking about this, it seems the invitation to see problems as symbols of a higher knowing is an invitation to find a space in which problematic dichomtomy becomes creative or generative polarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not having an immediate pressing problem in mind, at first I tried just viewing objects in my environment as symbols of a higher space.\u00c2\u00a0 Taking a walk outside, my attention was drawn to autumn leaves skittering across the ground and … Continue reading