We could say that love comes out of finding ourselves as oneness, and silence and stillness come out of finding ourselves as capacity.
– from a previous post
This is where words fall short, but I thought I would say a few more words about it here.
WHAT WE ARE IN OUR FIRST-PERSON EXPERIENCE
To others, and in many practical settings, we are this human self in the world. And yet, when we look more closely in our own first-person experience, we may find that – to ourselves – we are more fundamentally something else.
In our first-person experience, we may find ourselves as capacity for the world as it appears to us.
We are capacity for our own field of experience. We are capacity for this human self, the wider world, and anything else that happens in this field of experience.
To us, this human self and the wider world happens within our field of experience. We are capacity for it all. And it’s all happening within and as what we are.
ONENESS & LOVE
We notice that this human self, the wider world, and any other experience happens within our field of experience. We find ourselves as capacity for it all.
Here, we may also notice that this field of experience is a seamless whole. It’s one.
Any sense of boundaries comes from our mental overlay of mental images and words.
And when we notice this, we may find that another side of oneness is love.
It’s the love of the left hand removing a splinter from the right. It’s a love that comes from perception, from oneness, and is not dependent on feelings or states.
Living from this love is another matter. Our human self may still have hangups, beliefs, emotional issues, and so on that color our perception and life, and sometimes kick in more strongly and temporarily prevents us from living more intentionally from oneness and love. This is where healing comes in.
CAPACITY & STILLNESS / SILENCE
Finding ourselves as capacity is finding ourselves as, literally, nothing.
We are capacity for anything in our field of experience, and the capacity itself is nothing.
When we notice this capacity, it comes with a deep silence and stillness.
And resting in and as this can be immensely transforming for us.
I find myself as capacity. I find myself as this silence and stillness. I notice that a contraction in me is also this silence and stillness. Rest with and as it. And may notice that the contraction, in a sense, finds itself as this silence and stillness and tranforms and unravels within it.
ONENESS -> LOVE, CAPACITY -> SILENCE & STILLNESS
This is all in the borderland of being too intellectual, but there is also something real here.
When I find myself as capacity for the world, I also find that the world is one. My field of experience is one, and that oneness happens within and as what I am. Here, I also find it’s love. Oneness, when it’s noticed and lived from, is love. A love not dependent on feelings or states.
When I find myself as capacity, and notice and rest with this noticing, I find myself as silence and stillness.
From noticing oneness comes love, and from noticing capacity comes stillness & silence.
ESSENCE VS SPECIFICS
At least, that’s how it appears to me now, and it’s important to differentiate the essence from the details.
The essence of this is that, in our own first-person experience, we may more fundamentally be something else than our human self, and living from that noticing can be profoundly transforming for our perception, life in the world, and for our human self.
What many report is finding themselves as…. capacity for the world, what all content of experience happens within and as, oneness, love, or whatever other aspects people notice, and using whatever labels they find helpful and may be familiar with from their culture and tradition.
The specifics about how love and stillness & silence fit into all of this may be interesting and have some practical use. For instance, in my case, I find it easier to first find myself as capacity, and then notice the stillness & silence, at least for now. And it’s less important in the big picture.
Tomorrow, or next year, or in ten years, I may write about the specifics in a different way. For instance, I can find this stillness inherent in what I am without first noticing myself as capacity. This stillness in inherent in consciousness, independent of what forms this consciousness takes.
And others who explore this will also find and report slightly different things.
After all, when we create maps in this way, we may not be completely clear about the terrain, we notice different things as we get more familiar with it, we emphasize different aspects of the terrain, we may be influenced by other maps, and we use a language we are familiar with.
And that’s part of our collective exploration of what we are. The essence of what people report seems to be mostly universal, and what we each discover, emphasize, and how we talk about it may be a bit different. It all adds to the richness of our collective exploration.
EXPLORING THIS FOR OURSELVES
If we don’t notice this for ourselves, all of this can sound very abstract and even philosophical or a fantasy.
Fortunately, we can notice and explore this for ourselves, and it doesn’t even have to take that much time or be too difficult.
We can use the Headless experiments to find ourselves as capacity for the world.
The Big Mind process can help us find ourselves as all the different aspects of what we are, how they relate to each other, how we relate to all of them (what we already are), and so on.
We can use basic meditation to notice and allow our experiences, and perhaps especially our contractions, and notice it’s already allowed (by life, mind) and it’s already noticed (in the sense that it happens within and as the ordinary awakeness that’s here). This helps us find ourselves as the capacity for it all we already are.
There are also other very helpful approaches. For instance, we can explore our sense fields through traditional Buddhist inquiry or modern variations on this like the Living Inquiries.
And in each of these cases, it helps to be guided by someone familiar with the terrain, familiar with and skilled in guiding others, and someone we trust and resonate with to a certain extent.