Dear all,
In the midst of things, undeliberately as you can guessthe report on our last meetup was never sent.
Here it is with a tiny bit delay as it was rather long to put it together. Direct experience explorations are by definition direct, that is beyond mind and language. For those of you who could not attend our last meetup and for those of you who would like to continue on your own to explore wordlessly, here are a few tips & links and experiential exercises you may enjoy…
Let’s start with this one: Imagine that you are handed a list of names to read:
You read it once and it looks easy, right?
Now let’s read this not by reading the words but by saying aloud the colour of the written words. How does it feel? There is a hesitation, right? More than a hesitation, it is a discomfort, it seems that we are good at extracting CONCEPTS from our field of perception (words), but it is almost impossible to extract just PERCEPTIONS (colors).
So, our reading of life seems mainly conceptual...
Let’s now relax into some of the experiential exercises we tried together:
1/ THE HEADLESS WAY.We invite you to watch these videos presented by Richard Lang and initiated by Douglas Harding. Practice. Explore again a number of times one or two exercises during one week at least…
2/ THE 3rd PERSON.Set a timer for a minimum of 15 mms. As an individual or as a group, speak about yourself in the 3rd person singular. From your childhood to now, your work, your failures or achievements, anything is fine, whatever comes up. Try it and see how it feels after the first moments of fumbling. Practice as often as you can until it becomes routine to see most clearly that Life is simply enfolding impersonally for no one in particular.
Bonus: At the same time - if you can - try listening to "yourself" as if it were another person talking.
3/ LOOKING FOR THE SCREEN.Imagine a street scene in a movie. It can be Chennai, Paris, Cairo, anywhere you like. It can in America in the Far-West, during the French Revolution, it can be in Japan during the time of the Samourais, whatever...
Take your time, picture it in all details. Make it your own... Now imagine a character in the movie. It can be a man, a woman, a child. An Asian, a Caucasian, An African. Alone or in a crowd. Imagine it laughing, talking to someone, hurrying on his/her way to work, whatever…
Take your time, picture it in all details. Make it your own. Now watch the character walk down that street scene. Picture him/her in all details. Now imagine the character in the movie looking up and down the street… and aroundfor the movie screen.
Now pause a moment or more.How does it feel?"
“The person we think we are” searching for the “I” is like the character in the movie searching up and down and around the street for the movie screen. That is, the apparent ‘I’ (and all other apparent things) are already made out of the very thing that the imaginary ‘I’ is seeking.
The apparent ‘I’ does not find its source, it dissolves in it. In other words, the apparent ‘I’ is already the real and only ‘I’ of Presence, but seemingly veiled by the belief in being something other than Presence.
So in fact the imaginary ‘I’ doesn’t even dissolve in its source, because there is nothing there to begin with other than the real ‘I’ of Presence. When this is seen clearly all attempts to find the real ‘I’ cease spontaneously and the apparent ‘I’ stands revealed as the real and only ‘I.’ “by Rupert Spira
4/ THE SKELETON THAT I AM ALREADY AND ALWAYS.Sit down or lay down comfortably. Lift up your hands in front of you and start massaging your face, then go down your full body, omitting no parts slowly and consistently. Then redo the exercise by visualising your bones inside your skull, your bust - vertebra and rib cage - and your limbs.
Picture the assembled skeleton that is there, that has been formed with time, that will after the body has died remain merely as bones or be dispersed as burnt ashes…
Hmm….as you could guess, this exercise comes from the tradition ofCarlos Castaneda. A flavour of"Memento Mori".
5/ MEDITATION ON THE “I AM”byStephen Wolinski
Cannot post here the PDF of the meditation, so let me know if you would like that I send it to you.