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Piet,
I've been on the road for a few days, thus the delay in this edition
of our dialog.
Your description of the difficulty of letting go is excellent. It's
another of those infinite-regress paradoxes that permeate any attempt
to "talk about" consciousness. "Letting go of letting go of letting
go of...," ad infinitum. Recently I've been thinking that the way
out of these regresses is to look more closely at exactly what we're
trying to express. Sometimes the regress will collapse into a
convenient two-step process.
In this case, the first level of "letting go" actually means to stop
trying to hold on to the prior version of your self in which you are
stuck. Let go of who you think you are, which means to let go of
what you already know. The second level has a somewhat different
meaning. To me it means don't turn "letting go" into a religion;
don't make a big deal out of it; just do it.
So in a very important sense, you're right that the whole shebang
boils down to a very simple & natural formulation of wonderment about
what you don't already know. There really is nothing to do except to
be open to the incredible variation of what could be. And to be
aware of your own openness (the mindfulness thing).
That's what I think art is all about, and it's what I look for in my
photography. I try to let myself see what's out there beyond the
"postcard" version of visual reality. It's not a matter of "looking
for something." Rather, it's a matter of "looking past the
somethings" that I already know about. Looking beyond how I normally
envision the visual world. Kinda like a "what if" mind-set. Playing
with possibilities. Visual playfulness.
So you & I have already generated a little lexicon of words that fit
the general concept of your working hypothesis. You could probably
add more to this list:
wonder; wonderment
letting go
what-if
relax
effortless
acceptance
playfulness
the not-yet-known
moving past, or through, or beyond the already known
moving into possibilities
being in the here & now
openness
At this point I think that we're looking for a deep metaphor that
encompasses all such ideas, a metaphor which will immediately and
powerfully express the entire concept of the "letting go" regress.
Some kind of metaphor that is parallel to "mindfulness," which itself
so profoundly captures the "awareness of awareness of awareness
of..." infinite regress.
To me, we're talking about two parallel processes: Being Open & Being
Focused. OPEN FOCUS. Be open to what might be, and be focused on
(mindful of) your openness.
Rod