The Oscillation of Recognition
La Oscilación del Reconocimiento
A student shares recent glimpses of awareness as empty, witnessing space, and the teacher describes how the movement between identification and recognition gradually becomes a seamless vibration.
The Oscillation of Recognition
A student shares recent glimpses of awareness as empty, witnessing space, and the teacher describes how the movement between identification and recognition gradually becomes a seamless vibration.
I feel like things are starting to make sense for me. I've been really just letting go. I don't care anymore; I just let it go and focus on being in the awareness, aware of the awareness. I've had a number of experiences this week where it became really obvious that I'm not the one doing this. I was hanging out with my parents on Friday, and I was looking at my dad and thinking, "You're just a program. There's no one in you making these choices. You're just this collection of karma or conditioning."
Then it became so obvious that I was this pure, empty space, this clear seeing that was somehow melded into the thoughts. Yet I felt detached. I could see the program running. I could see the choices, the words coming out of nowhere. There was just an impulse to speak or an impulse to do something or to think, but it was like this really advanced program running inside me. And yet I was this same thing that was inside everyone.
It felt really strong. I was out walking a couple of days ago and it felt really strong. Then on Sunday it also felt really strong; I was in it for a couple of hours. Now I feel just normal. I'm still inquiring and being present as much as I can remember. It's not like it went away, because I know it's always here. It was just so funny because it was like, "Yeah, duh." That's what all the teachers are saying: it's right here. It's right here.
My mind is very excited about this and wants to think about it and put words to it. But I'm just allowing it to do that and trying to witness and come back to presence. It's really beautiful how it all came together. The pointing you gave me a couple of weeks ago on the Saturday, about not trying to change the fear, just seeing it. I even said at the time that I felt like it would take me years to recondition myself to not act that way anymore. But now I feel like I get it.
The endless deepening
That's great. And that kind of recognition, there's an aspect where it just is endless. The understanding itself is out of time, but at the level of life, the body, and the mind, the movement toward it is endless, in the sense that the recognition of it becomes more and more present.
My teacher once talked about it in a way I really liked. He said the connection with reality, with presence, with what we truly are, is a kind of movement. At first, we are on one side: identified, contracted. On the other side, we are expanded. So at first it feels like a movement back and forth. But at a certain point, it's not that it becomes still and stabilized; it's that the movement is so fast it becomes a frequency, like a song. When that oscillation is so fast that it becomes a vibration of presence, of being connected with what is, and then the mind appearing, bringing in time, that functioning happening, when that becomes more and more a constant reality, it's this kind of oscillation. It does seem like an endless fine-tuning, but once that recognition happens, the fine-tuning starts, and there is already freedom in that.
No balancing needed
I see that. I was exploring this with someone, and they asked me how I was balancing this understanding with work and the rest of my life. I said it doesn't feel like there's a balancing at all. It's just happening within this space. I just need to shift the focus to that zoomed-out perspective.
And then when you zoom out, zoom in. When you zoom in, zoom out. And then when zooming in and out becomes completely meaningless as a concept, what happens?