A Temporary Lifting

[Telepresent]

Ok, fair warning: this post is a little long!

I've had a very interesting morning so far.  I have an autolysis practice which I do (at least) every morning.  Today something lifted for a little bit.  I've considered trying to summarise or explain it, but I think the best way to share it is actually to copy the raw text that I was writing as it happened; a kind of real-time documentation of my attempt to work through it.

This hasn't been edited, so please excuse any proofing errors, etc.  Also, it's not exactly written to be read, so might be a bit incoherent at times!

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So there’s something happening other than thought.  This space (for want of a better word) within which thought arises.  Also the same space within which sight, sound, the rest, arise.  Easy to think of sensations as more real than thought, or as prior to thought, to hierarchise them, but they’re all arisings (something in me wanted to say ‘energetic’ arisings then – and my thinking stopped it).

So there’s a something – that something is these sensations arising.  Any interpretation of them – even the most basic, this is a body, this is my body – come from and through thought/mind.  Constructs, concepts.  Useful, but mind stuff.  Contents.  So what actually are the sensations – what are they made of?  Where do they come from, where do they go?  We’ve fobbed ourselves off by saying ‘colour, shape, tone, pitch, texture, temperature, etc.’, but those are descriptions, labels, more mind-stuff.  Shortcuts meaning we don’t need to look closer.  Dismissals.

And here the mind chips in with pre-ready answers: awareness, consciousness, energy, the ocean.  All names for things that I don’t know, haven’t experienced directly.  Avoidances.

What actually are these sensations?  What are they made of?

So full of myths.  So full of ideas.  Writing in the hope that it’s not a distraction, but a getting out of the system.  Trying to align my experience with the ‘path’ laid out by McKenna (what would he say to that?  Kill Jed McKenna, probably).  Constantly  wondering if I’m nearly ‘there’.  About to launch into an imagined something.  Imagining being seen, adored.  The movie of my life, right?

Interesting how thought pulls me back into a position of being ‘inside’ body.  Whereas when thought is not thought, there isn’t… it’s not even that I’m ‘outside’ body.  There just isn’t that dynamic at play.  It’s a non-issue.  And of course not how the mind imagines.

Because the mind tries to locate.  The  mind tries to place this and that.  Drawing boundaries, drawing barriers.  Now imagining other people reading this – want to suddenly be seen as great or smart or wise or some other crap.  Filtering filtering

Constantly, constantly, feel that?  Over and again: expand, thought, SUCK! back into body-mind.  I, I, I, I, I, all the thoughts all of them each one predicated on central I figure even if not saying I each one pulling sucking back inwards inwards rebuilding the concept the structure every single time

“What is this song?” reduces sound to defined structure of song spatio-temporal object being listened to by body-mind ‘me’

Reducing it reducing it

Still imagining a future of being great

Particular section of visual sensation called ‘fly’ – separated from the rest and defined, observed in relation to my separate body

Where does this come from?  What is it made of?  What the hell is it?

“What’s the name of this song?”  See the division there?  The sounds changed and you’ve given them a barrier.  The end of one thing and the start of another.  All one stream of sound, demarked by rules of where song starts where song stops what song is named.

Don’t fall into excitement.  Excitement lives in future, in thought.  “Am I about to?”  Irrelevant

See the separation there?  Now and future.  I am no not and I am about to.  Where is the line between now and about to?  The same as the line between two songs?  But the line between two songs is man-made: the sound-stream just continues.

What is it made of?  Misleading question.  Suggests substance.  Suggests an ‘underneath’ that it’s possible to break through to.  Not quite, not quite.  In and of raw truth.  Raw is.  Too conceptual.  Trying to define

Back into “I” thinking “I” building “I” through thought identification each thought saying “I” called “I” calling itself “I” and linking to every other thought calling itself “I” as if there is a constant as if there is an ongoing “I” and not just this fucking pile of thoughts all calling themselves “I” all holding hands with one another and pretending they’re one big booming monster

Every thought a definition a separation inherent lines and boundaries and separations and concepts and constructs and objects and dividing and splitting and breaking breaking breaking everything apart

Five senses.  Five senses.  Five senses.  Right?  Right?  Really?  One field.  One ‘space’.  Different qualities, different types, different forms.  But are they five or are they all part of the same thing? (Thoughts, as well!)

Phasing back and forth back and forth into mind out of mind.  Mind is not happy.  Mind is bothered and confused and wants to get into petty dealings of the day.  Something else is happy or maybe happy isn’t the right word but it is right it is raw it is

Indefinable

But kind of wants to cry

Look at this.  Just look at it.  How cool is this?

Just stop believing the “I”.  Just for a minute.  What a trick.  What a clever fucking trick.  “I” is not just me, is it?  Not just thoughts and body, but every piece of separation.  For “I” to exist, there must be separation.  So the printer, the laptop, the mug, the song, the ache in my foot, the pillow, the bag, the television, the wall, the tree – in all these things being separate things, there must also be a ‘me’.  Separate, separate everything, and separate me at the centre.

Even trying to name this thing this process this experience is separating it through defining it.  Making it a spatio-temporal finite experience, which by definition will end and return to ‘normal’ or to ‘me’.

Still imagining futures constantly imagining futures.  So easy, so easy and tempting to fall back into.  So easy and tempting to believe the fear, the fear of need to have to got to must do must do this thing time ticking away going to mess everything up got to get on with work got to do all the things or the world will end

Doing doing doing the doer always doing.  I the doer.  Without doing, without thinking about doing, without planning doing, without avoiding doing, what am I?

Lost it.  See – now in the past, in the past, only a thought a memory where has it gone?  Not gone, not gone, can’t be gone; the layers have come down and obscured it again.  The boundaries.  Boundaried objects, boundaried time, boundaried definitions, boundaried me.  Treating as bad.  Not bad, no such thing as bad.  Subjective.  Thought-game.  Just is.