When I first posted these practice notes, my fellow student at the time, Caroline Sherwood, asked the following:

“I’m particularly interested in the wormholes. What happens if we go into those…and into those…how far down the worm hole can we go, and if we do, what do we find, and who are ‘we’ when we get there?”

I responded…

Thanks Caroline.
You got me thinking about these interesting questions: If we go into them, ‘how far down the worm hole can we go?’  When I remembered focusing into the ‘wormhole’, what was blank or dark just suddenly opened, so it wasn’t like I was traveling any distance, like going ‘down’ a tunnel, but conventions of language have me speaking in those terms.

Another thought about ‘distance’ brought up the idea of sequences, such as how many wormholes could I focus upon that would open that summary memory of sitting on the beach in the sun, as opposed to opening some other context entirely? I realized I had abandoned the sense of distance as focus just seemed to open itself as additional impressions seemed to bubble up to a fuller awareness. And I think ‘intent’ was an unseen, almost ethereal thread that kept the focal awareness opening into the widest context of that summary memory. I don’t know how many times I could have fruitfully focused into those wormholes.

I also was wondering about your question if we do repeatedly ‘go down’ the wormhole, so to speak, ‘who are ‘we’ when we get there?’ I think TSK would suggest we are the open witness that is followed in time by an ongoing tendency that consolidates and organizes impressions.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by David Filippone.

I decided to include the practice here in the comments:

..this week we practiced a modified version of, ‘Dynamics of Time and Space’, Exercise 18 – Pastness Knowledge, that I call “Swimming in a Memory” or “Tracing a Memory”. The instruction is to [at least initially] recall a pleasant memory, such as sitting on the beach on a sunny day, or having dinner with friends or loved ones, or whatever you find pleasing. After sitting calmly and relaxed, at first you may recall the label you give to the remembrance, then images may arise. Since thoughts and memories are never finalized or complete, as an image arises, and after noticing what arises, focus on the part of the image that is incomplete. It may seem fuzzy, or dark, it may seem like a gap in the arising. Go into the fuzzy part that is incomplete, patiently. Do so caringly, for this is your pleasant memory. As you focus on the incomplete areas, look at them with an attitude of wonder. See what comes up from the incomplete areas. If another related image arises, notice its content, and then focus on any incomplete areas, and see what comes up this time. Keep repeating the process…

I recently found these quotes that relate, in my opinion, to this tracking back memories practice while anchored in the present.  As this Tracing a Memory practice may demonstrate, tracking back a remembrance, without getting lost in the content, can reveal the “multifaceted complexity of all phenomena.”  See the following excerpt from, ‘Searcher Reaches Land’s Limits, Volume II,’ by Richard Dixey, Excerpts from Chap. 67, p. 310-11, [Emphasis added]:

“The word ‘reality’ refers to a construct we develop based on a map. While the map may be derived from the territory of experience, experience itself is totally without the boundaries of a map. Indeed, actual experience is beyond any concept we might have for it. In ‘tracking back… we can observe that every event that occurs has a multilayered complexity beyond any possible description… However, if we engage directly with experience empty of concept instead of living ‘according to’, new potentialities arise. As we begin to see the multifaceted complexity of all phenomena, whether in the natural world or in ourselves, the perceived limitations we have constructed begin to melt away. We then find ourselves becoming more at ease with the extraordinary richness of each experience. There is no moment or experience that is inherently limited. We do not need to seek or crave a better moment…

PAGE 354, PARAGRAPH 2 [Revelations of Mind]: The more closely we are in contact with time—perhaps a hundred thousand times more closely attuned to time than the passing of a nanosecond—the less prominent a role identity plays and the less binding our attachment to habitual patterns. Unable to sustain its accustomed tasks, mind’s regime relaxes its grip, enabling us to operate it differently. Since problems and obstacles cannot arise in such a clear and open environment, we have an opportunity to experience a new freedom of mind.

 

When we are fully engaged we do not experience the passage of time. Our ordinary experience of time is linear, a seeming forward momentum and movement. Clock time is a mechanical tracking of this movement. Our identity is contingent on linear time because it requires the projection of a present moment in which names and concepts, the building blocks of our narrative, can arise. This projection requires points of reference, both a spatial location and a time marker, the key elements in the making of remembered experience. But once we are fully engaged there is just experience; there’s no geotag marking space and time. Past, present and future are no longer useful metrics by which to access our experience. Events simply manifest in ever expanding displays. You could say they are unfolding ‘in time’, but time is elastic. As we become attuned to experience and fully engage directly with it, clock time simply stops. Unable to sustain its accustomed construction of time, the mind’s regime relaxes its grip.”

I thought this was an eloquent expression of what might be understood while engaged in Tracing a Memory.  One might see the benefit in doing a personal history, tracking back the important milestones of individual growth.  I remember tracing back my personal hot buttons. For instance, as a younger man why was I so quick to anger.  What were the triggers?  When I had a knee-jerk reaction resulting in sudden anger, what happened, ‘how’ did the anger develop?  Going into it, like Tracing a Memory, noticing what comes up, and then looking into the gaps in the remembrance, seeing what arises, noticing and then looking into any fuzzy or unclear gaps to see what else comes up.  The essential attitudes to hold when engaging the practice are patience, and caring for my self, as if I were my own child, and also waiting in not-knowing for what may reveal… perhaps nothing, or perhaps the “multifaceted complexity of all phenomena.“