The TSK Email Forum
Thread TSKx29: Awareness as a Reflective Surface
Time and Space, and Knowledge, Exercise 29, pp. 257-8
Now work more generally with all the objects of perception and cognition that constitute your ordinary experience. Instead of manipulating your 'mind' or knowing capacity so as to seize upon objects and thereby know them, simply allow all objects to 'be known'.
At first, this amounts to adopting a more passive role than usual, conceding the active role to the perceived objects . . . they present themselves to your awareness. It is as though you, the subject, have become a neutral, reflective medium, like a mirror or the surface of a lake. Everything that draws near is accepted and reflected without your awareness itself doing anything, or changing in any way as a result of its responsiveness.
After practicing in this way, de-emphasize the 'presenting
to' picture, as well as the assumption that the capacity to know
is yours, that is, restricted to your side of the subject-object
encounter.
entry 0001: [Steve Randall, December 15, 1998] P. 408, KTS has some related material:
Because we tend to think of experience as primary and as separate from awareness, first 'arising' and only then 'presenting itself' to awareness, our awareness has a grasping quality. Awareness 'takes hold' of experience, making sense of it in accord with its own capacities, concerns, and predispositions.
Suppose that we proceed instead from the view that awareness and experience arise together. It might seem that in that case awareness would be more narrow and restricted, but in fact the opposite seems to be true.
Awareness and experience together open a quality of knowing
that does not depend on taking any position. Awareness
does not have to be bound by experience, nor does experience
have to 'appear' only in those ways that awareness countenances.
entry 0002: [Steve Randall, December 15, 1998] After doing the exercise for a while I noticed that uncomfortable physical sensations were the most definitely located elements of appearance. They were 'owned' by 'my' body, which had some 'depth' in extended and containing space. But after seeing this the ownership gradually dropped out of the experience, leaving a more open and neutral sensation not so separate from awareness.
entry 0003: [Steve Randall, December 20, 1998] The following text 'fits' nicely with ex. 29:
KTS, pp. 387-8: ARISING FREELY IN AWARENESS
. . . The light of the opening accommodated by this wider 'focal setting' would infuse appearance with a kind of luminosity. With energy and space more integrated, distinctions between 'this' and 'that' would lose much of their significance (though not their 'distinctiveness'). The gap between known objects or between object and subject, as specified through points, would likewise seem less fixed.
A similar transition is possible through a fresh appreciation for the way in which events 'occupy' time. When the energy that time manifests is tightly focused, it presents separation and distinction and character. But a more open appreciation for appearance lets the energy of time become directly available. Distinctions 'dissolve' into unity; the tension of separation (active both in generating and maintaining) disappears.
The above paragraphs from KTS inspired the following version of the instructions for ex. 29:
Suppose you are a very large mirror, so large the edges or boundaries are unknown . . . You can reflect all appearance, all content without attachment, without drawing it 'in' or 'toward' or rejecting it. Distinct 'things' and 'events' appear, yet no reflection is 'really' separate from other reflections or from the mirror. There is no separation between the reflection and the mirror, and thus no gap between subject and object, knower and known. Nor does there need to be any concept of anything outside the mirror that is 'causing' reflections. The images are completely open and transparent, in a sense 'nondimensional'. Is there more sensitivity to the light with which objects appear in the mirror?
entry 0004: [Steve Randall, December 22, 1998] The following text 'fits' nicely with ex. 29:
Presentation can occur in two distinct ways. On the ordinary
level, the mind seizes what is presented to it by time, positioning
it in accord with its models and the prevailing order. When Knowledge
is more fully available, another alternative opens: Mind can
join in the presentation. This begins to happen when what is
presented or given is accepted and appreciated as an offering,
rather than being appropriated and specified. (KTS, p. 453)
Return to the TSK forum thread list.
[ Seminars
and Study Groups | Origin
of TSK | Newsletter
| Definitions
of TSK | Study
Guide | Class
Adoptions | Reviews
|
TSKA
| TSK Characteristics
| Mailing List
| Applications
| Home
]
TSK ASSOCIATION
phone 510-303-1035
1815 Highland Place, Berkeley CA 94709