Transcription
Do you notice when the stress gets amped up, you feel like a pull, like a clinch inward into a a sense of a tight fixed center? If you notice this, this is a good thing because noticing something as such helps you to address it and see whether or not it's actually your primary experience or it's the primary experience. When you don't even notice it's happening, it's much, much less likely that you can collapse that experience.
So, the way of testing this or the way of looking into this is especially when you feel stressed, when you feel like you're you're really in your head or something um uncomfortable has been going on around you, notice your sense of perspective. Notice that it feels as if you are tightening inward into a like a really solid core. As if you're tightening inward and your vision, even though your vision is spread out this way, um your your sense of you, your sense of self is actually really consolidated. It's really tight. So even though there might be some spaciousness in your visual experience or in your even your conscious experience, that spaciousness is all essentially a kind of watcher watcher state or a kind of um outward spreading awareness. But that awareness itself in the way that that feels, the watcher state itself in the way that feels actually reifies a sense of clenching. Reifies a sense of being the one in the center.
Uh, this can take some time to see how that sense of a center is directly related to the the sense of being a watcher. Uh, but some spiritual practices will even solidify that that watcher state. So there can be a lot of value to like noticing thoughts um a lot of value to noticing perceptions and beliefs. I talk about this a lot. I talk about it in my book. But if it's taken to the extreme or if it's used beyond its kind of shelf life and its shelf life to me usually is awakening once you've had that first shift in perception um I'm sorry that first shift in identity um then what can happen is by using that watcher mechanism you can reify the sense of a center and sometimes not even realize you're doing it.
So, just notice if you're feeling that stressed situation or that feeling that contracted feeling or you're um feeling pulled inward, just stop for a minute. Stop like trying to process what's going on or thinking about it or analyzing and just notice the experience. Like look around you. Just even turning your head and looking. Does it feel like you're actually looking out from a center? Does it actually feel like there's a center here in the body somewhere or some point inside the head or behind the head behind the eyes and as you rotate your gaze or as you look around even actually mentally look around like that sense of that sense of awareness within consciousness or you could say conscious awareness whatever but does that also feel like you're looking out from a center.
Um, if you can see this, that's good. Once you notice that, then what you can do is actually start to investigate what it feels like to relax that center. And here's a simple way of doing it. Um, like anything else, this helps if you've calmed your mind a bit, if you've meditated for 30 minutes or an hour before you do this. Um, or if you just sat still for a while without a distraction, without purposely thinking about or analyzing anything, but just sat still for a while, which may feel a little uncomfortable. Um, or it may feel relaxing, but you got to kind of settle the body mind a bit to to really get to this.
Once you've done that, then first start by noticing the center. Noticing that feeling of being pulled into a center. Notice the feeling of actually being pulled. Even though it seems like attention's moving outward, there's something that's being pulled inward towards that center. That's what's actually happening. The attention's not moving outward like it seems. That's a the the perception that the attention is moving outward is a side effect of the feeling of pulling inward actually. But it's very hard to see that if may be impossible to see that until you can float that center outward. And floated outward means this.
So once you've relaxed, once you've sort of chilled out for a few, just as my Zen teacher used to say, just become quiet through and through. So just kind of scan the body briefly. And just see if you find some quietude there. Just a little bit of quietude. You're not trying to dissolve the center right now. You're just noticing some quietude in the body space in general, right? Some kind of um settledness. Not something that feels like the watcher is paying attention to, but actually a felt sense, right? Something that feels very close, intimate, feels like right here. It feels where like where the body is. Just notice some of that that spaciousness, that settledness of the body, right? And then from there, without moving your attention right back to that sense of being a watcher or being the the pulled in center, but actually from the standpoint of that that spaciousness of the body, right, of the body sense, just move your attention into the into the visual field specifically. The visual field, not awareness of, but the visual field itself, like the colors, the shapes, the forms, the shades, the light, the dark. Just let your attention actually kind of float out into that very, very gently. It's it's not even a doing really, but it might feel like a subtle doing at first. It's actually an undoing. But at first it may feel like you actually have to help your attention move out into the visual field. But it will feel like it's floating out into the into that. Right? One way of saying it is just put your attention out there into the visual into what's seen in the scene only the scene. Right? The suta. Move your attention there and just let it settle there. Let it settle there. Let it settle in that spacious but luminous visual experience.
This is in contrast to the sense of a center. This is something that feels more vulnerable, feels more open. It feels more surrendered for sure. Doesn't feel guarded. It doesn't feel um again like sucked inward. It's more like just putting your attention into the into that visual field and letting the visual field itself overtake. Letting the visual field be exactly what it is, but no more than it is. Meaning, we don't bounce back into the mind to turn it into something it's not. We stay in the visual experience. And as you do that, as you just stay in that visual experience, then often you will notice that center starts to float outward in a way. It's the feeling of being pulled in and having your your awareness pushed outward or a watching experience pushed outward. It's more like the center doesn't feel so contracted. It's like that contraction is loosening and it's almost floating into the visual experience. These may sound like the same thing, but experientially they're totally different. So it's again it's more vulnerable is the word I want to use because you really feel wide open when you do this. You are wide open. The sense of you is opening till it's just dissolving into the visual literally. Yeah. So it's just the visual field. So the just the colors, just the appearance, just the scene, just what is seen. Um, and stay with it. Spend some time there. Spend some time just staying in that and noticing here how what used to be relegated to a center is now a kind of field of free floating self-liberating appearances.
These free floating appearances are not objects of objects of perception. They're not objects of awareness. There's no watcher. They don't have a wa there's no watcher experiencing them. They're they're self-experiencing. That's the difference. It's so clear. It has a sense of um completeness. Has a sweetness to it, a sense of purity, a sense of pristineness in a sense of being self-supporting, self-sustaining, self-eradicating. It's um free the the the the self-liberating appearance appearances are free. The freedom itself and with this the sense of a center is just seen to not actually be there. It was an effect of using attention a certain way through habituation that sets up this sense of being a watcher or being a a center always observing around itself and and pulling back into itself all the time. Almost like no matter what you're looking at and no matter what you're thinking about what you're looking at, you're actually always recoiling from it. Even things that are pleasurable, it's a constant recoil into a center. That's the opposite of this. This feels like there's nothing to recoil from. There's no way to recoil from it because it's self-sustaining, self-appearing, self-presenting. So, there's no way to recoil. There's no need to There's no need to analyze. There's no need to pull back from this to see what it is because you know what it is. It's already known. It knows what it is in a way, but not cognitively. It doesn't need to. It's too real for that. So, there's no need to assess it. There's no need to question it. There's no need to seek anything here. Nothing. There's nothing to seek. It's already here. All of it.
So, this is what it means to float the center out into this, let's just say, an array of Self-liberating appearance. Self-liberating color space. Whether whether they're objects or not objects doesn't arise. It's not a concern. Whether it's real or unreal does not arise. It's not a concern. There's nothing conceptual about this. Whether whether it has any meaning whatsoever or no meaning at all is completely um irrelevant. This is it's just totally irrelevant. The completeness is clear. And this is something that could be I you could you could uh you could do this forever. The intimacy that you seek is here. The freedom you seek is here for sure. The peace that you seek is here. Even if you don't know that you're seeking peace, even if you don't know that you're seeking liberation, it's here. This is it for sure. Um, in part that's clear because the seeking itself is gone. There's nothing to seek here. But that's not the whole story either. There's so much more to the story that but it just can't be told. It's a story that can never actually be told. But it can be it can only be directly realized actually can't be described really. Not very well. It can't really be experienced either because then there's still an experience or split from an experience or the perception thereof. So really can only really be realized but the realization is potent. It's very profound.