{"id":8780,"date":"2018-05-22T11:22:10","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T18:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=8780"},"modified":"2019-09-15T11:04:31","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T18:04:31","slug":"expanding-condensing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=8780","title":{"rendered":"EXPANDING & CONDENSING…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo courtesy of: ‘Beach’ by Pexels – Pixabay
https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/ybnh2437
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EXPANDING & CONDENSING<\/p>\n

In TSK class we were engaged in what we call an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcexpanding\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 exercise\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 designed to open the habitual \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfocal setting<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, the default setting from which we seem to most often engage with, and view our world. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s different for everyone based on our personal history and life experience, but we come to a familiar position, one from which we then judge how things are\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 how our world is. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t usually notice it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a tight \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfocal setting\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or perspective that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve simply settled on\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and that there is much more in each instant that we are NOT taking into account. You might call it a habitual\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 mostly shallow or flat depth-of-field view\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 So the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcexpanding\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 exercise calls attention to our myopic perspective in order to actively demonstrate to ourselves and open it… to encompass more in our experience moment to moment.<\/p>\n

PRACTICE \u00e2\u20ac\u201c EXPANDING & CONDENSING – bring up a happy memory\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 notice the feeling tones\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The instructions were to bring up a pleasant memory, and I thought of one I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve worked with before\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 of sitting on the beach. I recalled memory flashes of the sun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heat on my skin, the sky so blue and open you could lose yourself, and the blue-green ocean, the crash of tumbling waves, the salt in the air, and the sounds of all the people laughing-talking all around. I recalled the pleasant feelings that I associated with that memory, and those flashing images were the whole of that memory, as if it was fixed, as if I assumed it was a snapshot, bounded by limits I was constructing in the present while in the act of re-calling sitting on the beach \u00e2\u20ac\u201d frozen in time.<\/p>\n

But as I kept returning to the memory it dawned on me more \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstuff<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 kept coming to my attention, it EXPANDED; I saw space, gaps and holes between and around the flashing images, and I realized, first… memory is not a static thing!<\/strong> Even though we say the past is dead and gone, in a sense it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alive because I am alive. The memory is a dynamic, moving thing in time, and while I skimmed over it initially as what I chose to focus upon, it was just a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsummary<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of a moment of experience that was NOT inherently bounded. I set the boundaries of it back then when I experienced it, and even when I recalled it as a memory.<\/p>\n

Working with the memory, as I noticed space or darkness around the edges between flashes of images, I decided to focus on those spaces, and what surprised me was that these spaces opened up. It was as if they were little tunnels, like worm holes that opened to some subset of the memory \u00e2\u20ac\u201d like a new flash of specific faces in the crowd around me of children and adults coming out of the water toweling off, and sitting on their beach chairs talking to others. Each gap I encountered led to, or opened another branch of my remembrance. (An airplane dragging a long a colorful sign, girls talking to the lifeguards, and so on.) You could say the past opened to reveal more branches, or that time unfolded <\/em>what I (a consolidating self) had previously enfolded<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I found this \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcopening the past\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 exercise (EXPANDING) exhilarating, how it informed my present about how I go about structuring time, processing experience by managing content, by controlling, and ordering how and what unfolds.<\/p>\n

CONDENSING \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Was kind of interesting\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 looking deeper into the gaps and spaces, it felt perhaps like a kind of condensing, looking ever deeper, smaller, or prior\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 between things, made the memory more vivid<\/em>, highly colored<\/em>, and true to life<\/em>. It was interesting that a memory could be expanded, and then looking perhaps smaller into spaces & gaps, more memory arose, and that could be expanded, and in turn looked in too. What was at the outset available in the original experience that became a memory, was perhaps limitless, but I had my default \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfocal setting<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, at that time\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 set for self-limiting and thus, time-limiting\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 a habitual summary mode… a ‘flattened’ experiential depth-of-field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EXPANDING & CONDENSING In TSK class we were engaged in what we call an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcexpanding\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 exercise\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 designed to open the habitual \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfocal setting\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, the default setting from which we seem to most often engage with, and view our world. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,81,113,85,115,70,78],"tags":[113,85,115,70,78,69],"class_list":["post-8780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-general-tsk-discussions","category-awareness","category-expanding","category-memory","category-opening","category-space","category-thought","tag-expanding","tag-memory","tag-opening","tag-space","tag-thought","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8780","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\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}