Kent has joined Melissa and I in our inquiry.
Kent: Thanks for letting me come in at this point.
Melissa: Okay by me.
C: Melissa, any further thoughts on what we’ve said, so far?
M: I only want to check: It seems one implication of what we’ve been discussing is that we, and all phenomenal life, imply a larger dimension.
C: Yes, a ‘more’ that we are, and which in the human body presents as an intricacy which can be felt. Yes. And, this implying is in our actual occurring; it’s not the logical ‘imply.’ That’s important, for the experiential enquiry.
Or, we could start with interaction, with the movement of life called, in the Buddhadharma, interdependence. That bigger process always exceeds the individual, and the individual couldn’t be here without that bigger immeasurable life. Is that what you mean?
M: Let’s see… (Melissa feels into the middle of her body, to see if that what I said ‘lands’ there.)
It’ll do for now. So, somehow, our actual process of thinking and speaking has to take the big immeasurable process into account – not as a theory, or as a mere concept – but as the living; intricacy-felt inwardly.
C: Lovely. The bigger process (which I refer to usually as ‘This’), it exceeds my concepts, but if I feel into its presence, then my concepts can carry my life forward freshly. I don’t mean carry the poem forward – that’s a tiny part of what happens – but, I mean carry the poet forward in his process. That we can experience ourselves doing this is one way we know the implicit wholeness is actual. (I pause) And, again, this ‘actual’ openness has to be felt as one’s life, yes.
M: That’s good. Let me stay with that for a while – that thing about, if I am intimate with how I am functioning, I will experience that there is a ‘more’ (which, across the planet, we call all kinds of names).
C: Yes.
M: I can feel the importance of that. And, I feel a trust that the bigger order (the ‘whatever-it-is’) can work in me, can come through with something, when I include it.
C: Whatever ‘it’ is, it is different than our conceptual categories. ‘It’ is in our ‘kinds’ of experience (which our concepts help draw forth). Fundamentally, that bigger life-process is different than language.
M: And gives birth to language – even now, not just historically.
This is the knowing I’ve been feeling into – that whatever ‘that’ is, experientially – it is different than our concepts. It’s more than our concepts. I feel it sometimes in conversation with my friend.
C: That’s a good place. Other trusted people can bring it to the fore.
M: So, you’re saying, that the ‘responsive order’ is a big allowing for concepts, and by allowing it in our process, we can see this quality which we are calling ‘allowing.’
C: Nicely put. Yes.
So, right here, in this conversation. We don’t know what we’re going to say next, or where these words come from, but we trust the process, and by tending our mindful bodies, our present situation is carried forward. We can know the ‘This’ by participating, as we go, with recollective present-moment awareness.
Kent: Mindfulness, and Focusing.
C: ‘Sati’ and clear comprehension; or wisdom. So, we’re continuously shaping it, as we know it.
M: Maybe ‘sati’ is natural reflexive awareness.
C: Interesting thought.
M: So, it’s not a problem (as some meditators think), to have concepts. ‘Concepts’ aren’t the bad guys of evolution. Instead, we can say that our thinking happens, at its best, when it interacts with this vaguely felt bigger order.
C: If we take the emphasis away from the content and see the process, then we can see it’s no problem to have concepts. They are empowered by being connected with the whole; and the whole is carried forward by connecting them.
Cognition can then include and depend on the dynamic, unbounded wholeness. We know it’s here, because it’s doing us. I’ve learned this by studying Gendlin. (Though, I have to say, I don’t know if I’m representing him properly. I only take responsibility for the way I’m saying it.)
M: So, the big inconceivable reality conceives in us?
C: Alan Watts asked that question back in the sixties: ‘Do you do it, or does It do you?’ Of course, that’s okay, to say that. However, if we went into it, we’d see that ‘This’ is not limited by thinking in terms of I/It. It is more than ‘I do It,’ or ‘It does me,’ or both, or neither.
M: Even saying ‘This,’ that limits it.
C: Yes, unless we’ve seen it together. Remember I’m communicating. ‘This’ can open it up in us, said at just the right moment.
This implicit ‘whatever-it-is’ – the going-on – is different than our categories, though – our kinds, our concepts – because it is something that can’t be made into a known category itself. It is a continuously, inexhaustibly fecund, un-kindable presence. We can’t kind/conceptualize/categorize the whole big ‘This’ that is going on here. It’s out of reach of our concepts.
K: Fecund?
C: Prolifically fertile. It gives birth heaps.
M: Very much. I get that.
Part 3 to come…