In class this week we were instructed to, "...look for stories in operation that limit and define you.  For instance, you may eat more than you mean to, or waste time on something (playing a computer game, watching television, etc.), or sleep late instead of getting up to run or meditate or practice. When you do, look for the story you tell yourself to justify what you are doing, or are about to do, or just did."  Also, look at "when you find yourself feeling anxious or concerned or angry without quite knowing why. Those are good times to look at the way stories take hold or exert their hold." 

I've watched the currents of so many personal stories over the last few weeks that looking back seems like peering into an aquarium filled with liquid.  In the stream of stories I  feel like a fish swimming in them, not aware of my submersion from moment to moment.  I catch myself at different times, like when driving; navigating somewhere, on my way as background and landmarks come in and out of focus.  I'm carried along by the currents of my own desires and avoiding, enthralled with (enslaved by) making meaning by matching stories.  Sometimes these 'tellings' uncover springs emerging from deeper origins, closer to their source; tales of justification, tales that have been used to authenticate a current story:  "I should do this."  But, when it's time to do it, I think of shrinking from doing the task, because another story emerges asking, "What if I fail?"  Fear of failure stories conflict with stories about the need to face fears.  Inner dialogue circles, like a gathering whirlpool, confining focus and sapping energy around values of 'should' and 'should not'; all revolving around 'me', the me who is a 'gathering story'  from one moment into the next.

At some point, thankfully, there's a collapsing of the storm, a calming of the waters.  Focus is widened, space is available, stories like strong undercurrents dissipate, or lead to a wider range of possibilities; such as stories that allow for both the previous competing stories and encorporate more accommodating stories:  "What if you don't fail, and succeed instead?" or "What if you fail and learn something valuable by failing?" 

So, opening space by inquiring deeper into my thinking, my internal dialogue, seems to shift perspective to a different and more spacious level where other possibilities can be narrated.  I notice space at the center of the fluid flow of my stories, swimming in my stories, I also become the space the stories seem to flow within.


                       Sunken mangrove forest - Eric Cheng - Wetpixel Mag

  
  PRACTICE NOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fall 2008 - Unit One: Inquiry, Space

October 6 - December 5, 2008
Davidu
1.  Layers of Mind with TSK
2.  Exploring Layers of Mind with TSK
3.  Space of Memories of Layers and Contexts
4.  Expanding with TSK
5.  Expanding - Revealing the Field
6.  Condensing Experience with TSK
7.  Week 7, Generating Space
8.  Tracing the Tendency toward Solidity

Balder
1.  Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)
2.  Deepening Layers of Mind
3.  Week Three: Exploring Space and Form
4.  Week Four: Expanding Layers of Mind
5.  Subject-Object Reversal (TSK Class 9)

Debyemm
1.  Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)

Winter 2009 - Unit Two: Thoughts, Stories, Self

January 12 - March 13, 2009

Davidu
1.  TSK Course Two - Time (Thoughts, Stories, Self)
2.  Week Two - Thoughts that Establish
3.  I'm Telling (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4.  Unit 2, Week 4 - Defining Stories
5.  Models, Stories and Self - Week 6
6.  The Founding Story of the Self (week 7)
7.  Imposing Reality & the Cycle of Seeing, Week 9

Balder

1.  TSK Online Course (Unit 2)
2.  Watching Thoughts (TSK Class 2, Unit 2)
3.  Telling Stories (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
4.  Telling Stories 2 (TSK Unit 2, Week 3)
5.  Personifying Thoughts, Embodying Space (TSK Unit 2, Week 5)

Starlight
1.  Adventures with Time, Space, Knowledge
2.  Noticing Thoughts - TSK Exercise
3.  once upon a time...tsk exercise
4.  restoring multidimensionality...tsk exercise week 4
5.  Memories, Models, Stories, Immediate Experience...TSK Exercise...
6.  self interpretation...models...tsk exercise...
7.  core self...tsk exercise...wk 7
8.  self and world given...tsk exercise...wk. 8
9.  Creating My Reality...TSK Exercise...wk 9...

Spring 2009 - Unit Three: Conducting Time and Knowledge

March 30 - May 29, 2009

Davidu

1.  Objects of Desire - TSK Class 3, Unit 1
2.  The Edge of the Future - Class 3, Unit 2
3.  How Time Recreates - Class 3, Week 4
4.  Time is Our Life - Unit 3, Week 6
5.  My Summary of the TSK Class

Starlight

1.  Objects of Desire...TSK class 3...unit 1...
2.  on the edge of time...tsk exercise class 3...wk 2...
3.  Time...Past...Present...Future...wk 3...
4.  Opening up to Time...TSK exercise...class 3...wk 4...
5.  Unending Flow of Time...class 3; wk 6...
6.  Footprints in the Sands of Time...TSK exercise, wk 7...
7.  Time Conducting Time...TSK Exercise...wk 8...

I appear to be on a single track with my posts regarding searching for work, but it's the stuff of my experience right now.  And so last week we were asked to observe the differences between a story and a model.  I was thinking that in a sense a model 'short-hands' experience.  For instance, I have a model for an upcoming meeting, it's an employment interview, and as such, it's expected to unfold within certain parameters.  There will be discussion and evaluations, a mutual give and take to determine whether or not I might bring needed talent and experience, which may or may not result in a job offer and acceptance.

My stories about the meeting consist of anticipations with regard to who I will meet, and what that meeting will be like, points I should remember to make, and questions I should ask.  Afterwards, there will be stories based on my memory of the meeting, and my interpretations of how it went, what I learned, and resulting judgments and conclusions about this new knowledge.

So, in this instance the model is a kind of invisible blueprint, a social convention categorized as an employment interview, as it underpins my meeting.  This model of an employment interview 'excludes' the kinds of exchanges that would occur in other kinds of meetings, (a romantic meeting, a meeting of friends at a sporting event or the movies) and in defining the range of interactions the model seems to correspond to a communiqué, a setting up in advance of the adhered to but unseen hand of logical structure that guides both the interviewer and the interviewee in the dance they do.

For this week we were asked, among other things, to continue looking at stories in operation: "the ways you make sense, the ways you excuse and justify, the ways you judge others and yourself, and so on." 

So I looked into the stories that resulted from my interview and how I judged what happened.  And right from the start I realized my judgments were from a center, from a perspective that was me.  I judged how 'I' performed in the interview, how the company I was applying to stacked up to 'my' criteria of whether or not I would fit well, if I would be happy there, if I could grow and prosper there.  'I' was fitting myself into my notions and conclusions about what working there would be like.  I was adding to a context that I had established as a sort of empty placeholder in my mind that stood for the company when I first sent in my resume.

I should say, there were moments during the interview, that I simply forgot about the interview model and my 'self', and simply remained present to the other person as he spoke, and I opened and responded to his communication.  During those moments I felt a kind of bond or communion, a sense of mutual understanding and agreement.  I can't say whether or not I will end up working there or not, but maybe that has something to do with why I've been called back for a second interview.

Looking back over the model and story process there was a sense of progression, and that 'looking back' can be 'modeled' from a succession of moments, to a widening of focus, such as when we say in TSK, in knowingness, time unfolds as space allows, there is a spiraling as perspective moves through spacetime, and knowing becomes more encompassing, but at the same time more open.

I helped dramatize a graphic model of this progression with Bruce awhile ago.  We overlaid the AQAL model with a kind of TSK model to represent knowing perspectives in space and time.  So I'm loosely applying the graphic below to model my interview process.

(Figure 1), represents how I was experiencing overlapping moments or stories in my head, and I noticed space opened enough to see how I engaged time in a linear way, as I played out my projection about the upcoming interview in the immediate future.  And then I recognized how memories (the past) acted as a rudder for determining current anxieties and reactions.  I felt constricted by time; running out of time before the interview was upon me.

Upon more investigation, space allowed further opening to see my modeling and my experience simultaneously (Figure 2). Since I become aware how my presumption of a linear time structure operated on my stories, past to future, stories seemed to open, and I had improved focus on the present.  Focus on the present experience allowed me to dwell there, and being in the present opened up experience rather than conceptually limiting it.

Upon further investigation, space allowed time to present an even more open knowing (Figure 3).  A new, more comprehensive view and way of being was experienced.  I became more appreciative of my interview and the process of interviewing, leaving the model itself behind (but still aware of it) in favor of experiencing directly the communication, and simply being with the other person - an experience that was more full, rich, and expansive.

So what does this all tell me about the distinction between models and stories?  It seems that models can be a special kind of story, and I put models together to 'make sense' of experience, while stories make up a large part of my experience as I 'inhabit' them.  My reality seems to consist to a large degree of my stories, about myself and others, and my models of how the world is.  As Tarthang Tulku says,  "The world that we are accustomed to, even in its most 'direct' and 'immediate' manifestations, is an intricate and overlapping complex of models, built up out of interpretations, presuppositions, concepts, meanings, values, and memories."  [LOK p.137]

The result of our class inquiry up to this point leads us to the question then, if we are immersed in our stories, models, and interpretations, then how do we get to a realm of pure experience?  Our teacher says we'll be looking into that in the coming week.

Our teacher, Jack Petranker tells us, "We have been looking for a couple of weeks at models and interpretation as a way of challenging the usual understanding of what is real.  If we take that challenge seriously, it would be stunning, in an almost literal sense. Whatever we accept as solid, as basic, is just a construct.  If that is so, how can we act? How can we take a single step, when there is no ground?  Of course, the aim in exploring this insight is not to fall into a kind of paralysis or depression.  Instead, the idea is to recognize that we are not bound by the usual models, the usual forms of understanding, including our understanding of time and space and knowledge.  But how can we engage this insight at the right level?"

This week we turn to look at the self, and how through stories the self takes on the role of the founder of our interpretations, our contextual worlds, and the self's own founding story.  Jack makes the point that it is essential not to make this understanding into a "theoretical observation", and that becoming aware how we create our own reality, and how the self is the outcome of a story, seeing this in the moment, can have a profound impact on us.

I thought of "I want" as coming from a feeling of lacking; a desire for what I thought would fulfill the lack.   Some answers to this question were:  a job, financial independence, and continued good health.  There were moments when no answer came forth, and in those moments I seemed to have no wants, the question seemed unnecessary, even superfluous. 

I thought of "I need" as essential, more basic than a want.  And so my answer to this question was that I had a need to feel a sense of comfort or safety, and following from that, "I needed" to relax my tense focus on finances and safety issues, I needed to open up and appreciate the benefits of space, what is 'already here' with less emphasis on the concerns I construct.

I was listening to some jazz music, and I sat back to observe the play of sound in space, and I noticed the instrumental accompaniment to the melody was a kind of narrative, carrying the context within which the 'meaning' or the melody told it's tale in rhythmic time.  In that moment I saw how my stories were similarly directional in time, carried along as stories connected to other stories while they built a kind of momentum, referring from past to future with emotional urgency, particularly around safety and security of this feeling of 'me'.  I also saw how that experience of listening to jazz was one model pointing to another, my description of the narrative experience here, also organized and ordered around my sense of me -- both examples of models atop models that the readings refer to. 

Swimming in the music of my own telling, trying to remember to listen to the silence in between, moving sometimes in opposition to, and also 'with' the flow of experience, and sometimes 'as' the flow... the melody plays in space, and is space.