Presence
Table of contents
This was written for Kira's Ways of Knowing workshop with discussions and reports (here here here here here). See also:
To contemplate (an issue) is to "open up" the question in your direct and personal experience and then see what develops. Go into it in particular, and in depth. Here are some questions and considerations that go at the matter from different perspectives. Don't try to "answer" the questions as if the answer is somehow implied by the question, or the question is a query to some cosmic search engine of what is "already known". The "information" in a contemplative question is You, or rather, the result of activating the question in your awareness and in the world. If you can't "open" these particular questions, perhaps you can adapt them such that they work for you. Or take an alternative entry point that you already know about. Any way "in" is a good one.
Introduction
I'd like to propose Presence as a topic for contemplative inquiry.
As a starting point, I was reviewing some of the dialogues about the early ideas behind the PlayAsBeing group. Perhaps this is a dangerous starting point, because the discussions there are very abstract (even though what they "point at" is not). If you have an ideology about such things then hold it lightly for now. To get something fresh, and to "contemplate", I suggest resisting the impulse to go into an analytical or language-oriented perspective such as "what is Mind (or Being)?". Don't assume these Big Words actually refer to anything at all. There's no "noun" to be located. For the time being, assume they refer to what You are right here right now being / doing / changing. Their meaning is their effect on the process that is you. Which for reasons we can't go into, are not necessarily knowable in the familiar sense.
S: Shere is a difference between stretching the mind to learn new things and learning about THAT MIND ITSELF and then relaxing some of its central, and problemmatical features, thus uncovering a way of knowing that is more appropriate, natural.
P: [Let's consider] the question how we can best function in PaB, "helping it along" as you expressed it. Now one radical position would be to say: there is ultimately nothing we can do, and trying to help things along is not appropriate for a Being kind of view, so if we take that stance we can simply hope to attract individuals with very strong motivation exploring the nature of reality. But another stance would be to try to kindle that kind of motivation and in that way to "help along"... My option is to see what motive people actually have.
P: Wu-wei implies: watching keenly, but not manipulating and in PaB too, the question is: how to respect and cultivate everyone's motives, without manipulating including of course respecting and cultivating our own motive.
P: It (Being) may sound like an idea without any grounding, without any application, in some sense even more vapid than the notion of "God" or "Tao" and yet the (seeming) paradox is that when working with Being, getting familiar with it, it turns out to be in some sense more concrete than anything else
S: The poison of idealism lies in its seductiveness. It pushes peoples' buttons in powerful ways, appealing to slightly confused notions of rightness, etc. "Being", by contrast, doesn't mean much to people.
P: When you suggest that we try to go beyond the ordinary mind, you then don't mean to try to use a different mind? Is it more like dropping any notion of mind altogether?
S: No, there is no real "going beyond" because that itself is part of the way the ordinary mind thinks, and reaches, and wants ...it's more a matter of learning, seeing, and relaxing ...even this relaxing is just seeing, ultimately, hence my emphasis on seeing and how this = Suchness
P: so to sum up, what do you suggest we do with respect to what you call the ordinary mind: watch its operation, try to drop it, or ... ?
S: you cannot drop what is not learned about and then seen fairly thoroughly, within an apt (spiritually-oriented) perspective ...
Considerations
Catching It In The Act
Questions
How does imagination work for you in specific situations? Perhaps some of the following questions will be evocative:
- How may / ought one act in relation to others? Or assess "other minds"? How does love develop?
- When are you aware of being creative, and how do you go about it?
- Do you have some basic beliefs and attitudes about the nature of imagination? What effect (do you imagine) holding those beliefs has on you and how you go about living?
- In what ways do you intentionally employ Imagination as a mode of knowing?
- In what areas of life is your imagination freer or otherwise more active?
- In what areas is your imagination more constrained, and why might that be?
- What do you imagine about Imagination?
Homework
Perhaps you will "take on" one or more of the above considerations (whichever works for you). Better yet, find your own entry point(s) into this theme. Then choose a specific area or aspect your own life that involves presence, and look into your experience.
- What is there and what your part of it is.
- What is happening, what changes are occurring, and perhaps "why".
- What (if anything) develops when you go "further" by bringing it your awareness and presence.
- Report and /or share it with others. Compare notes. Learn from others.