Where Does the Visual Field Appear?
¿Dónde aparece el campo visual?
A student describes a strong preference for meditating with eyes closed and a resistance to keeping them open. The teacher explores how this preference rests on an arbitrary division of experience, and points toward the unchanging awareness in which all experience appears.
Where Does the Visual Field Appear?
A student describes a strong preference for meditating with eyes closed and a resistance to keeping them open. The teacher explores how this preference rests on an arbitrary division of experience, and points toward the unchanging awareness in which all experience appears.
For the first time, I took your suggestion and kept my eyes open. I've been resisting that. I so much prefer to keep my eyes closed that I was noticing the strength of that preference, and then I saw the stories connected to it. I could prove to you why with my stories. I'm good at that.
I'm sure I'd believe them.
Exactly. I get extra points if you start nodding your head. Roll you in, bring as many people on as possible. It's a great way of life. Anyway, it's pretty obvious: it's all about conditioning. Noticing the conditioning. And then I noticed I had a certain threshold, like, how much deconditioning can I take before I close my eyes again?
The cost of holding on
How much are you willing to give up? If there's something you're not willing to give up, that is a form of identification. You probably won't experience it as a story you don't want to give up, because once you recognize something as a story, you're already halfway there. It will feel more like something very important, something you're going to fight for. To go from there to recognizing "this is a story" is something else entirely.
There's also a matter of discernment: What am I attached to because I'm identified, and what is simply a value I hold?
A value?
You said "I will fight for it." There is an aspect of genuine goodness, of what is right and loving. And then there is what we rationalize as valuable and good but is actually self-involved.
That speaks to me. It didn't occur to me, because being visual feels superficial. I'm not comfortable there. I'd rather be inside. There's a value added to being inside.
Where does seeing appear?
But I ask you: where does the visual field appear?
Oh. There. Yeah. You caught me. That's beautiful.
You're splitting experience and pushing something to the other side of an arbitrary line. Well, it's not entirely arbitrary; it's functional. But when it becomes absolute and we lose the reality that all is appearing in the same place, then the illusion begins.
This is different from, say, two cups of coffee both appearing in the same place. I can work with them separately because at a certain level they are two. There is a distinction between the two cups, but I know they're in the same space.
What I see, what I hear, what I think, what I sense: all of it appears in the same space. I can distinguish what I see as functionally useful for navigating the world, because the body is here and other things are there. But if that separation becomes the foundation of my reality, if it's an absolute separation, then look at your experience. That's not what your experience actually is. Your experience is that it's all appearing in the same place. Not just the body and the rest, but also sounds and sensations. Where is the line between the sound and the visual experience? Where is the line between seeing and sensing? Really look for it, and see if any doubt remains.
When that's seen, you can still operate with the distinctions. There is still a use for what I often call a mind map. But if we don't see that the mind map is a mind map, it becomes reality.
I can see how this has the potential to take me very deep into meditation, because I can't depend on habit.
Depth is not a destination
Even that sense of "deep in meditation" versus "what is happening right now" at any ordinary time: that difference in depth isn't as real as it seems. This is not a state you can work yourself into. It's a recognition of what already is.
Being completely immersed in thought and being in a deep meditative state are, at the fundamental level, the same. They are just experiencing. And seeing that frees you from the pushing and pulling of experience. That which knows you are immersed in thought, lost in confusion and contraction, and that which knows the deep state of meditation: it is unchanged. It's just the kaleidoscope turning.
When I say "that which knows," I mean experience knowing itself. But here language fails, because it always implies a twoness that isn't there. It's just appearance, appearance, appearance. Contraction: appearance. Deep state: appearance. Freely moving, changing, nowhere to get to. It's just the river flowing.
The preference for eyes closed
Back to your sense that eyes closed is deeper and eyes open is not. That contrast is worth exploring. For there to be a fundamental difference between the two, you have to be looking from a point of view, from a position in the mind where one is better than the other. But that which knows those two is deeper. And "deeper" here means more real.
From there: eyes open, eyes closed.
The non-attachment to experience matters here. There are certain kinds of sensations that arise when eyes are closed in a meditative habit, and there are sensations when the eyes are open. Why is one better than the other? How do you know?
That "knowing" why one is better: that is the identification. That is the narrative. As opposed to simply: "I don't know. They are just different in flavor. I prefer one, but I'm curious about the other."
Continuity of identity
There is a certain continuity of identity that is more easily preserved by maintaining certain kinds of sensations that are familiar. This is what narratives do. If I hold the narrative "the world is out to get me, this is dangerous and scary," that creates an emotional tone, and the continuation of that emotional tone becomes "I." I am that which is in this feeling.
If everything is allowed to move and shift and change as it does, then there is no continuity of "I" in the experience. The only continuity is that knowingness, that beingness, the consciousness of experience. But that is not in the experience, so you cannot call it "I." You can only call "I" something that is appearing.
Say more about that, please.
That knowingness I'm describing is prior to thought. It's prior to the mind. So the mind can only label a construct of it and then call that "I."
The seeing that is empty.
The minute you call it "I," you're creating an image of it. That's an apparent contraction.
It's an experience.
You see, there is no real contraction. It's still there, playing as the space. Another appearance, and another, and another. Endless.
That is it, for me at this moment at least.
Just taste it. Don't worry about it.
Now I'm thinking I want to say something, and I'm wondering, is that coming from the old conditioning? I'm just going to be quiet.
Sounds good.
Thank you so much.