Rod's Summary

Piet & Everyone

Week 4 Summary

This week's experience is perhaps best captured with several excerpts from my daily journal, almost all of which dealt with the dichotomy between daily life and the meditative state:

things I need to do today churn the waters of the sea of tranquility: Even so, that awareness itself can lead to a calming of the waters.

five minutes to find the sea of tranquility: Searching the horizon for where I am, failing at first to realize that where I am is "right here" & when I am is "right now" & what I'm doing is "exactly this." Why is the here & now & this so elusive?

 transition from there to here, from then to now, from that to this: The biggest difficulty at this point is to infiltrate the Tranquil-Holistic into the frantic pace of Linear-Causal reality.

reaching a balance between Linear-Causal and Tranquil-Holistic: L-C remains my dominant mode. I'm working from the hypothesis that my T-H needs to deepen to be more in balance with my L-C in order for a deeper integration between them to arise.

being here now doing this: The struggle with dichotomy remains.

It would be so much easier to segregate my life into the reality of daily activity and the reality of meditation. Just do Linear-Causal during daily life and enjoy Tranquil-Holistic during meditation! But I don't think that "solution" is in keeping with our Working Hypothesis. It becomes Either-Or, maintaining a Cartesian Duality, instead of reaching for a deeper synthesis.

How will I ever know if such a synthesis is possible if I don't continue the work of exploring it? I shall endeavor to deepen my Tranquil-Holistic state of consciousness and observe whatever synthesis, whatever blending, whatever integration, arises between it and my Linear-Causal state.

Commentary on Week 3 posts

In keeping with my Week 4 Summary, I was struck by a common thread from our Week 3 posts that has to do with how the everyday world is "interferring" with our ability to do the 5 minute daily meditation. Many of us seem to be struggling "against" the everyday world, seeing it as an impediment to exploring the Working Hypothesis of Completeness. For example:

Maria wrote: "this week is all about struggling in daily life stuff and noticing what my mind is up to"

Frank wrote: "practicing WH...is easier for me when I am relaxed and [in a] contemplative mode, if I am not too tired, stressed or fatigued and if my mind is not spinning around objects"

Nicole wrote: "I was in 'work vibe' which this week has been filled with nervousness, newness and excitement...but planets away from the WH"

And I wrote about the apparent dichotomy between the meditative world (Tranquil-Holistic) & the world of daily life (Linear-Causal). These two modes of consciousness are both strikingly palpable and powerful, and yet they seem so radically different as to defy integration. But the Working Hypothesis of Completeness implies that both are real and both are part-and-parcel of the same thing, perhaps even to the degree that there IS NO DISTINCTION between the meditative world & the world of daily life. I.e., everything is complete, everything is already here, now, and always.

How, then, can we see the world of daily life not as an interference, not as something to struggle against, not as something "outside of" the Working Hypothesis...but as the very thing which we are seeking? Not an easy task!

... from Rod