I was asked to post a description of what I often do while reading the TSK books. It’s very similar to actually using or engaging TSK Exercise 29 – Awareness as a Reflective Surface, p. 257. In this practice we observe what arises, something like watching clouds, or waves rolling in at the beach… without naming, judging, or narrating to yourself what is happening. or in other words, just observing without the ordinary separating activities the self habitually engages in. So, in meditative reading, the TSK books for example, perhaps a particular paragraph that tugs at me. I will do the following…
MEDITATIVE READING – Reading & Reflecting – I read, then look up at the trees… breathe, focus and unfocus the eyes, relax my thoughts and allow knowing to dawn and reveal… read a little more, and repeat. Let the movement of the leaves stir the patterns that reveal what dawns from within.
Anything may come up, even unrelated to TSK, it’s as though the body of knowledge is unshackled by intention, compulsion, or preference. Patterns of mind echo patterns in the leaves, motion or movement like ripples, or rhythms of time, space and knowledge hold sway. Yes, I come out to subject addressing objects, but not in a grasping way. It’s much more relaxed and allowing than my ordinary way of knowing that hinges on self-concerns. I come out, and relax again in the open knowing. Back and forth, like a subtle dance…
So, the present opens up when we are not actively structuring it with self-concerns. We may notice how we lose the urge to self-sooth, or distract from anxiety, and worry. Maybe the urge to search for fun, and other distractions dissolves. We discover joy in the present, a fullness of simply Being.
Hope this was helpful, warm regards…