|
|
Heloisa and Rod,
Although I have been trying to make working with the working hypothesis
part of my daily practice, setting aside a day to focus on it
specifically was helpful in giving me a taste of how much more rich
practice can be when shared with others in a cyber-based retreat sense.
While trying lightly to `stop', many times during the day, and trying
to keep the paradox of the working hypothesis in my mind, the notion of
freedom from identification
hit me as a good formulation of the working hypothesis.
Or a bit longer: we are not who we think we are, our cognition does not
work the way we think it works, time does not flow as we think it
flows. We have tamed the magic of reality in such a way that we
have constructed a network of aspects with which we have tightly
identified.
It is possible to wear all those identifications more lightly,
continuing to work with them, without really buying into them.
They have their role to play within the world in which we find
ourselves, but beyond their roles, there is nothing there, at least
nothing that can be pointed at within the world we think we have found
ourselves. As in Taoism: it is the unsayable that gives rise to
the sayable. And the working hypothesis tells us that the
unsayable is not mysterious or abstract or unrelated to us; in fact, we
are IT, and this implies that
the full resource of IT is available, here and now.
We just have to learn what this full availability means.
Or in other words: the challenge is to explore the consequences of that
hypothesis, to see whether we can actually
learn to wear our identifications lightly, keeping a fine balance,
neither discarding them nor getting stuck to them. Learning to
taste freedom from identification means stopping, stopping our futile
attempts to block Being. We are normally trying to catch the
Light of Being into a small box called self, by opening the lid ever so
slightly, and as soon as something wonderful comes in, we close the lid
in order to capture and possess it. But we can't really capture
light in a box. The way to use it as a resource is not to try to
posses it, but rather to stop our timid habit of trying to close the
box. Let's open the box completely.
Even better: let's look carefully, to see whether there ever has been a
box. Perhaps the box itself has been a figment of our
imagination, a result of a mistaken identification? From the
point of view of Being (which actually neither is a view and has no
point) there never has been a box. But as long as we think we are
dealing with this little box of ours, as long as we identify with our
little body and mind, by all means, let's try to open, rather than
close the lid.
Piet