Federica wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 7:46 pm Ashvin,
When I say that “I see things” in a certain way, there is no assumption or suggestion that that way is the truth, and no intention to drag anyone down at the level of my current understanding.
This attitude that you judge presumptuous comes in reality from a growing realization of chance and opportunity, and from a feeling of gratitude. It comes from in between the words of the prayer recently suggested by Cleric. It says, Lord be with me, inspire my thoughts with the luminous ideas that can lead me, it doesn’t say, there will soon be nothing left around here, let me pick up the torch and create a world for other beings that need it. I know this is true, and you are fully justified to say that. I understand the urgency you are expressing, though I am clearly not at that level where I understand the process of reality as “me”, flowing in a unified way with my activity. But I certainly don't exclude that others can, right now, so please take my words as simply coming from a different mood, not as a negation of others' ability to live up to that task right now. I also feel urgency, but I am expressing it from along my trajectory, certainly at a different level of understanding/being/doing.
Hey Federica,
Merry Christmas again!
I just wanted to re-post what I wrote yesterday in response.
I know you don't intend to 'drag anyone down' to your current perspective, and I am confident that if you persist with prayer, meditation, and reading of Steiner, Klocek, or anyone similar who explores these ideas in depth, you will find the optimal orientation for your path over time. In the meantime, I am only interested in helping to clarify the underlying principles of this spiritual practice, and learn whatever I can in the process of dialoguing. These principles can be really important because, even if we don't resonate with a particular angle of approach or exercise, they will no doubt come to our aid in other approaches and exercises we pursue. For instance, let's revisit the following:
With regard to Cleric's lastly suggested exercise to slow down the process and catch the distraction, my experience is that I can slow down the thought a tiny bit but if I overuse this flexibility, the skin of the thought will to become so stretched out, so thin, that it's like calling for it to crack open. The cracks are the distractions, discontinuities, or falls. Like on a piste, especially if it's a difficult one, one can adjust speed a little bit, but it seems impossible to take it at a very low speed. Under a certain speed the descent loses meaning, nothing flows anymore, the speed is inherent to the experience of the thought. The speed is the fabric of the thought. If I dismember the fabric, I dismember the thought. That's how I see it.
I would say that calling for the cracks to open is completely natural for this exercise, so that we can observe intently what comes through those cracks (we are baiting them with our spiritual activity). That was my experience as well. It should start to feel unfamiliar, uncomfortable, straining, etc. As Cleric mentioned, this aids us in deconditioning from automatic thinking habits, tied to our lower nature, which assert themselves when doing such exercises. The strain is not an indication that the thought-fabric itself has broken down, but rather that we are pushing against the boundaries of our normal sense-based cognition, which is exactly what we aim to do. There is really nothing 'inherent' to thought-experience apart from the mode of consciousness which is participating in it. So we are in a certain sense aiming to 'dismember' the thought-content to invert into a higher mode of cognition, which knows the thought-content from a higher vantage.
We shouldn't be focused on the meaning of the thought-content. In the normal sensory-conceptual spectrum, we miss our intuitive activity which collapses into that thought-content because we are too focused on its isolated meaning (the whole environment is also structured to reinforce this polarized state). When things start to lose their meaning for us, we stop paying attention to them and thereby miss the meaningful intuition embedded in the depths of world appearances. Instead, with the meditative exercise, we want to attain an intimate experience of how the inner voice is reflecting the intuitive activity which weaves in boundless potential of meaning. We are seeking to experience tightly how every 'jot and tittle' of the inner voice is shaped through that activity. When the cracks inevitably open and thought-distractions flood in (including feelings of anxiety, frustration, helplessness, etc.), we don't resist them but invite them with open arms. Not to get carried away on them but to observe them intently and see how they are interacting with our activity. These are great opportunities to observe the 'liminal spaces' of our thought-trains which we would normally never have.
As we persist in this rhythmic alternation of willed thinking and intent observation, we can start to live more directly in the intuitive thinking potential before its wave function collapses into the thought-patterns which would have manifested if it had fallen into the cracks. We start to understand more deeply, through flashes of intuition, where such distracting patterns are coming from within the depths of our own being. Normally they just surface in our consciousness and we don't know what hit us - we don't have any cognitive leeway to anticipate their arrival. This is why they become 'inherent' to us, because they arrive independent of our cognitive anticipation and our will. It is really the same principle for all phenomena of the world we experience. What we normally call 'nature' is simply that portion of the phenomenal world processes which has not been brought within the sphere of our intimate spiritual activity.
I am not expecting a response on this today, but would like to hear how the above reasoning sounds to you when you get a chance.