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inquiry based practice
December 2009 
Objects of Desire - TSK Class 3, Unit 1
Davidu
Our teacher points out: "No matter what we are experiencing, even if it's something as simple as seeing the flowers on the table in front of us...we make sense of it in terms of some story... in every moment we take a position, we posit a situation, and we impose meaning."
I saw in the last unit, specifically in the Cycle of Seeing exercise, but in others too, that stories while making sense of experience, also confine it through the self-structures and models I impose. This confinement manifests in part as time-structuring leading from past to present to future. I saw that this continuous cycle of referring from the past to the future tends to flatten out experience, while the fullness that is available is consistently overlooked. We've been reading about, and investigating how, 'descriptive knowledge' which is based on the past, describes the world and provides a web in which the self arises, and gives birth to linear time as 'intentional knowledge', and projects the self into a future. We're told the point of TSK is to inquire into the reality we live, "to see how time, space, and knowledge might be different from what we usually imagine", because our normal approach is inherently partial, restricted, and frustrating.
So this week we're asked to work with a modified exercise 19, Object of Desire, from "Love of Knowledge". Our teacher, Jack Petranker, asks us to observe our objects of desire:
"Do the exercise when you find yourself desiring something in the course of your day. It may be something strongly desired, but it could also be the little flicker of desire that leads you to reach out and have a second potato chip, etc. The idea here is to get familiar with desire in all its forms. You could also do the same thing with aversion or dislike. For instance, what is the feeling that keeps you from doing some necessary chore?"
I wanted to observe my internal processes during different desires, and also during incidents of avoidance. Among other things, I observed the desire for an iPod, the hunger for lunch, the avoidance of anger and not wanting to display it, and desire for employment that was really a desire for some kind of financial security or independence. I even observed the desire to move out of the present to hang out in a space of imagined possibilities, in avoidance of the present.
I noticed, during a recurring desire for a 'thing', the tendency is to imagine myself in possession of it, in certain attractive scenarios or stories. I saw myself enjoying it, and there were pleasing feeling tones around the story. The pleasing feelings seemed to feed into a space that felt sort of lacking, a hollow that is almost 'itchy' for filling in; like not wanting to be here with what is, and hankering for something new. Avoiding something is very similar, but the feeling tones were different. They seemed to come from a desire to not want to feel uncomfortable, as I was immersed in an imagined story of how 'things' might be. Hunger, on the other hand, felt very basic or direct, but then I also proceeded to projections of filling the hunger, fulfilling the expectations that sprang from it.
Both desiring and avoiding seemed to emerge from concerns centered around my self-interest; there's a story from the past about the good thing I want or the bad thing I want to avoid, and there's a projection of a story in an imagined future; a space in which these stories are accepted as a possible future. The underlying feeling of a restless dissatisfaction seemed to motivate my-self to use these images as a basis to identify with the object, and a way of proceeding to act toward achieving the imagined desired object or avoiding it. I realized I could drop the self urges and just observe this process standing partially in it, and outside it, as an observer. The latter seemed like a way to encompass both.
I also noticed at times that it sapped my energy to want something if there was a lot of 'process' involved in the wanting (same with avoiding). So that at the end of investigating aspects round the desired thing (even though that seemed somewhat interesting), I still didn't have it, the thing was still 'out there', and I felt disappointed, frustrated, that the whole process was circular and a waste of energy.
A final point, I remember achieving something I wanted after much prior effort looking into it, it was a particular car, and I did feel the presence of it, and my involvement with it when I drove it. But after awhile the restless identifying with it, and the investigating process had concluded. There was little left to the imagination. In a short time I was once again ultimately faced with 'what is', and the urge to move away from it.
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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...
Access: Public
David, thank you for this entry. I was a little stuck on where to go with this as I have been focusing on the 'physical', and have had 'good' days and 'bad' days as it regards my breathing abilities, and the only thing I was desiring was to breath deeply for the most part, but b/c of your entry, now I can look underneath my reasons for wanting to breath deeply, and also inquire into the linear time that seems to allow for change via 'doing' something different. It has also brought to my attention that when I am unable to breath, I tend to focus on the past or the future. When focusing on the past, I am using those stories to explain to my-self why it is I can't breath, and maybe that is re-inforcing those reasons; when I focus on the future, I am anxious for the 'now' to pass and come into a time where my breathing is easier. Instead of those options, I am finding that being aware in the moment, and listening to what my mind and body are trying to tell me, might just offer the 'knowing' and allow me to relax into my own Being…at any rate, I am clearer on what to write about now…much joy to you…and again, many thanks for this entry…always, star…
Hi Star,
Thanks for the comment. I resonated with what you said about breathing, which reminded me of experiencing physical pain after tearing cartilage in my knee… [here] is what I said in part:
“Each inhale was a lock-and-hold and each exhale was a nano-surrender that soon filled in with the continuous throbbing pain, and fearful thoughts. At one of the exhales the thought came from nowhere to ‘feel the space.' At that point I realized I was trapped in a very narrow perspective, and so decided to unclench and focus on the pain, but instead of trying to avoid it by thinking how I could not endure it; I focused directly into it, and allowed it to expand and occupy my full attention. I noticed where I felt it, how it felt, and how the rest of me was tensed up. As I relaxed I felt pain! Nevertheless, I maintained focus on where it hurt and how pain registered in my awareness as a kind of prevailing atmosphere. I also noticed as I did this, pain memories and fearful projections of future pain and embarrassment diminished. As I relaxed into it, pain was still present, but not the way I was previously allowing it. It became but one of the elements in the space within which the rest of me resided, and that space opened to a vastness that included areas that did not hurt. While pain was still there, ‘I' was not myopic about its presence, there were other things to observe; such as how breathing had become steady and calm, how the body had relaxed as I kept monitoring it (no longer locked and tense), and what this focal setting revealed was more available space, time presentations, and knowing distinctions. I had moved from a limited level of my knowing capacity to a more allowing level.”
Anyway, for me, a little more focus on the exhale helped me feel space expanding, and as it did, it seemed to heal the frenetic desire and continuous move toward flight from the present moment.
Thanks again Star, I'll PM you with the new reading list for the course that I just received
Best,
David