The Center of Looking
El Centro del Mirar
A gentle exploration of turning attention back toward the one who is looking, discovering an open emptiness at the center of experience.
The Center of Looking
We could do a little bit of an exploration on a different take on the process, or the question: who am I, the process of self-inquiry.
This is a very well-known question, a very well-known process, but there isn't a lot of detail on how to do the exploration.
There are many ways to do it.
Asking the question
So we can ask the question, who am I?
And then look and wait openly for what appears.
The mind will naturally have an answer.
And so if we are open and receptive and observe, we will see what the underlying answers are.
And just wait.
Let's see what appears.
Notice if, for example, there's a subtle foundation or an assumption.
It could be something like, "Well, of course, I'm sitting here asking this question."
Not as a thought, but as an underlying foundational mental reality.
It's an assumption.
It's a thought. It's an interpretation.
What if all of this is a dream?
How do you know?
How do you know it's not?
And so the question must go deep, to really consider and look at all the assumptions.
The image and story of I
And the identification works with different aspects.
One has to do with the image of the person, I.
The story of the person, I.
The image begins with a body, the shape of a body in the mind.
There's an outline.
There's a knowing of one's face as an image; one sees it in a mirror.
And that is I.
And the story of I, which is memory, coming from somewhere, going somewhere.
Now it's: when am I in time?
I'm here, coming from somewhere, going somewhere. All part of mind.
And then: where am I?
Well, I'm here and not there.
Here, as in there's an appearance and an experience of body and a space, and therefore I am where body is, and not where table or chair is.
Looking more closely at the body
If you look closely, the body is appearing over there.
This is why we have the experience of "my hand," "my feet."
Something that I am more deeply, more fundamentally, knows hands, knows the feet, but it's not hand, it's not feet.
So it can't truly be that what we are is the body.
So maybe it's somewhere in the body that we are, but not in all of the body.
Where is this "I am"?
In the head, the mind, the chest?
Look at your experience.
Where does it feel you are?
Turning back to where you're looking from
If you were to turn back and look at where you're looking from, you might notice sensations, tensions that feel like me, I.
The face and the head, the throat, the chest feel much more like where I'm looking from, the core of the location of where I am.
Don't try to change things or undo things, shift things.
Take that position consciously.
If it feels like where you are looking from is behind the eyes, then assume that position as: this is where I am.
Stay at the heart of it.
Bring your attention to the core of that location.
This might feel like a hard place to look at.
The closer you look, the more the mind might get activated with images and thoughts.
All of these thoughts that are based on the assumption that there is something there, something in that center.
And as close as we look, the closer we look, the less we find.
There are sensations, thoughts, a certain emptiness.
Maybe a contraction, but that's it. Just sensation.
More images in the mind.
Resting in the emptiness
So let the mind settle.
Let this emptiness be the looking.
Be at the center.
Just an empty looking.
Nothing specifically here, but there is seeing, there is knowing, there is being.
And at the heart of it, at the center, just empty spaciousness.
No thing, no forms does not mean nothing.
Emptiness does not mean nothingness.
Emptiness is mystery, unknowable.
All experience shares this nature
And notice that all of experience shares this nature.
Your experience of your hands, sensations.
We know our hands through sensations and thoughts, images.
The image of the hand appears as a thought and comes and goes as a thought, a flicker from emptiness into emptiness.
The sensation appears, comes and goes and changes, from nothingness into nothingness.
Like a river flowing, changing forms.
Formlessness into form, form into formlessness.
All sensations, all thoughts, all perceptions, sounds become forms out of the formlessness.
Go back into the nothingness.
Like a bioluminescent lake in the night.
Nothing appears until there is a movement.
And as the water flows, the shapes and forms appear.
Empty, infinite timelessness.
That which knows this, which recognizes this, which resonates with this, is the silence that we seek, the peace that is here that we have forgotten.
The freedom that is no forms and all forms.
And from there, every appearance is a miracle.
Every texture, every sensation, every perception, the beauty of divine creation.
Intimacy with this is endless, bottomless.
Every texture and flavor, pleasurable, savored in delight.