Re: "Feel that I know"Dear Susie and all,
Just to respond to your question, if not object, what are we?
We are flow form, dynamic inclusions, not occupiers, of space and so are not absolutely definable in an unfrozen world, distinct (identifiable) but not discrete (isolated).
Warmest
Alan
----- Original Message -----
From: Susan Goff
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 04 February 2007 00:56
Subject: Re: "Feel that I know"
Greetings Ted, Lovely to meet you
"but this view of 'his behaviour' does not take into account that he is included within an evolutionary flow that is beyond his control".
I find your whole piece beautiful in its reason and expression... Thankyou for offering reflections that seem to me to open again into the feeling of thought that we are generating here. It is so exciting to know that others are focussing here and have done so much thinking and exploring... I find it such a difficult subject to open up with people... There are a couple of things I would dearly like to explore...here ... if you are interested -
Fist, the cultural languages that may be (may come into being, have been and that have been forgotten...), for our communication into ways of being with each other where we feel thought in this way - as a flow, both beyond our control and of our making - at the same moment....These may include something of what Sarah, Jack and Alan were talking about - something about a deep felt commitment to care - care of what? Not sure that the "of" matters... But also words, and perhaps more felt things like pacing, leaps and indwellings.... Images too as we started this discussion with, perhaps other senses.... How can they be brought into cultural manifestation between us here and now? I would be excited to carry out a designed interaction on line with you and anyone else who is interested to explore this...
And what do we perceive of those qualities that you say we have no control over - do they control us or is control no an issue here? Either way, what do these qualities of flow/felt thought perceive of us when they are here? How can we perceive of something without making it the object, how can we be perceived without ourselves being made object?
If not object, what are we? Are we made purely of our senses? IE - if we discover other "sense" are we something different?
I am in a post doctoral heaven/oblivion, so please forgive me if my interests seem ... Difficult to schedule
Warmest, Susie
On 3/2/07 8:23 PM, "A.D.M.Rayner" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: ted lumley <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: 'A.D.M.Rayner' <mailto:[log in to unmask]> ; 'BERA Practitioner-Researcher' <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Cc: [log in to unmask] ; 'Steve Taylor' <mailto:[log in to unmask]> ; 'Mushin' <mailto:[log in to unmask]> ; 'paul murray' <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 02 February 2007 22:25
Subject: RE: "Feel that I know"
hi alan, susie,
susie, my hunch is the same as yours;
My hunch is that we depend too much on "seeing" which has the cognitive result of turning everything into an object and distancing us the observer unless we make a big effort to do otherwise. Other felt senses of knowing, like feeling knowing, could mean that we have a very different construction of self and our orientation in the organic world.
many people (most of us?), if you ask them (if we ask ourselves) 'are we fully responsible for our own behaviour?' will respond 'yes'. and, indeed, our western sense of justice is founded on the individual being fully responsible for 'his/her own behaviour'.
but what if i pose this question to someone who makes laminate flooring. he may respond 'yes', that he is full control of his own behaviour.
but what is he 'thinking' of in terms of 'his behaviour'? he is likely thinking of all the actions that he internally authors, drives and directs, ... whether this inner sourcing is by his biogenetics, biochemistry, biophysics or by the structure and processes of his individual psyche. that is, he thinks of his actions in terms of bringing together certain inputs, transforming them and outputting them as products together with some unneeded effluents. that is, he thinks of himself in terms of a 'productive machine', as someone who 'gets things done' and whose behaviour is internally authored, driven and directed.
but does he really understand 'his own actions/behaviours'? laminate flooring contains flame retardants, and flame retardants are concentrating in our bodies and they are toxins at some level of concentration (this is hard to assess). so, one aspect of his behaviour that he does not normally include, because it is not included in a simple input-transform-output individual-self-as-machine model, is his relationship with the dynamical space he is included in. evidently, there is a continuing flow-through of gases, liquids and material substance, by way of his breathing, drinking, eating (transforming) and expelling of gases, liquids and material substance.
he is thus included in this flow; i.e. he is included within a dynamical flowspace.
our normal model of our 'self' ignores our inclusion in a dynamical hosting flowspace. it starts with what we use, and ends with what we produce, ... and the reservoir from which we take and into which we put, is assumed to be absolutely separate (mutually excluded) from our sovereign existence and independent internally authored, driven and directed behaviour. that's how we have come to consume locally at a greater-than-naturally sustainable rate, and when we locally over-graze or deplete/pollute the local water supply (or petroleum supplies) etc., we (with the most locally non-sustaining social dynamics) are 'forced to' extend the range of our acquisition of resources to sustain our rate of consumption. 'sustainability' thus refers to sustaining our social dynamic in the manner to which we have become accustomed.
this machine model, by which we believe we are responsible for our own behaviour, and therefore, that we understand our own behaviour, thus 'twists off' from the reality of natural limits to sustainability.
what does it mean to say that we are responsible for our own behaviour if we do not understand our own behaviour? if we 'know not what we do'?
the man in the cart on the way to the guillotine also maintains that 'he possesses free will' and that he is in control of his own behaviour and he can get up and dance a jig and sing a song of his choosing any time he chooses to. but this view of 'his behaviour' does not take into account that he is included within an evolutionary flow that is beyond his control. thus, his understanding of 'his behaviour' is this 'machine' type understanding, as is the case with the laminate floor maker. it is a gross over-simplification (with a good deal of utility as long as we do not forget that it is gross over-simplification) that occludes our intuitive, feeling-experience based understanding of being included within a spatial-relational evolutionary flow-dynamic.
so, so long as we continue to think of our behaviour in terms of 'machine behaviour' that is disjoint from the dynamical space we are included in, we shall be sourcing dysfunction since 'what we think we are doing' is radically incomplete by its ignoring of the interdependence between our individual behaviour and the dynamic of the hostspace we are included in (bohm calls this 'gap' in understanding 'incoherence').
ciaoforniao,
ted
-----Original Message-----
From: A.D.M.Rayner [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 12:42 AM
To: BERA Practitioner-Researcher
Cc: Ted Lumley; [log in to unmask]; Steve Taylor; Mushin; paul murray
Subject: Re: "Feel that I know"
Dear Susie,
Yes, that's exactly the point I was making: to 'see with feeling' it is
necessary to perceive the 'space', not just the fixed frame perspective of
the 'viewfinder' that leads to objectifiction. This is the essence of
inclusional experience and what enables a crowd to flow by orienting with
the ever transforming current (present shape of space) rather than
dislocated 'objects'. When we're in objective, rationalistic 'see only'
mode, we 'wrong foot one another' like calculating machines on collision
course; when we're in 'see with feeling' mode we glide easily around one
another. My friend Ted Lumley has written extensively about this: see
www.goodshare.org. And my 'how pure eyesight can dislocate your knee'
exercise is also intended to reveal it.
Yes, we do in a sense have sixth and seventh senses - those that feel
invisible 'gravity' and 'warmth', but they're not associated with explicit
organs on the outside of our bodies (ears, eyes, nose, tongue, skin) and so
get taken for granted, rather than being understood as vital to our
inclusional 'proprioception' as Margarida Dolan attests - our sense of
self-location in the gravitational and thermal (i.e. receptive spatial)
field. They are also vital to our emotional experience of the loving
presence of absence, pervading all, known to some as God, Holy Ghost,
Brahman, Dao etc. When we know this presence, we no longer believe in 'the
ghost in the machine', the internal executive that declares us to be
independent from Nature, with our very own 'free will'. Neither do we
believe in determinism.
The poem below is about this.
As Mohsen might put it, may you enjoy the warm pool of gravitational
reception, where darkness is vital for our natural neighbourhood!
Darkest warmth of heavenly laughter in which the Devil may come to care and
be cared for,
Alan
---------------------------------------------
BEYOND OBJECTIFICTION
You ask me who you are
To tell a story you can live your life by
A tail that has some point
That you can see
So that you no longer
Have to feel so pointless
Because what you see is what you get
If you don't get the meaning of my silence
Because you ain't seen nothing yet
You ask me for illumination
To cast upon your sauce of doubt
Regarding what your life is all about
To find a reason for existence
That separates the wrong
From righteous answer
In order to cast absence out
To some blue yonder
Where what you see is what you get
But you don't get the meaning of my darkness
Because you ain't seen nothing yet
You look around the desolation
Of a world your mined strips bare
You ask of me in desperation
How on Earth am I to care?
I whisper to stop telling stories
In abstract words and symbols
About a solid block of land out there
In which you make yourself a declaration
Of independence from thin air
Where what you see is what you get
When you don't get the meaning of my present absence
Because you ain't seen nothing yet
You ask of me with painful yearning
To resolve your conflicts born of dislocation
From the context of an other world out where
Your soul can wonder freely
In the presence of no heir
Where what you see is what you get
When you don't get the meaning of my absent presence
Because you ain't seen nothing yet
You ask me deeply and sincerely
Where on Earth can you find healing
Of the yawning gap between emotion
And the logic setting time apart from motion
In a space caught in a trap
Where what you see is what you get
And in a thrice your mind is reeling
Aware at last of your reflection
In a place that finds connection
Where your inside becomes your outside
Through a lacy curtain lining
Of fire, light upon the water
Now your longing for solution
Resides within and beyond your grasp
As the solvent for your solute
Dissolves the illusion of your past
And present future
Now your heart begins to thunder
Bursting hopeful with affection
Of living light for loving darkness
Because you ain't felt no thing yet
----- Original Message -----
From: Susan Goff <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 01 February 2007 21:47
Subject: Re: "Feel that I know"
> Thanks Alan - yes understand about seeing things as a whole - but I am
> trying to understand something other than seeing (visually or cognitively)
> for a moment, more like an embodied sense of "feeling" knowing - in the
> moment of recognition that Jack identified.... It is very hard to put
> accurately into words so please forgive me.... If I can dwell on this
sense,
> integrating it into seeing might come later. My hunch is that we depend
too
> much on "seeing" which has the cognitive result of turning everything into
> an object and distancing us the observer unless we make a big effort to do
> otherwise. Other felt senses of knowing, like feeling knowing, could mean
> that we have a very different construction of self and our orientation in
> the organic world. Susie
>
>
> On 1/2/07 7:00 PM, "A.D.M.Rayner" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Dear Susie and All,
> >
> > Welcome back into the stream, the water's lovely!
> >
> > Ah yes! But really to feel the stream, there is a need to view the
picture
> > as a hole.
> >
> >
> > Warmest
> >
> > Alan
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Susan Goff <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: 01 February 2007 00:58
> > Subject: "Feel that I know"
> >
> >
> >> "I look at the picture as a whole and feel that I 'know'
> >> from personal experience the material context"
> >>
> >>
> >> Dear Jack and everyone..
> >> I just want to pay attention to this line that you wrote.
> >>
> >> I want to slow down, and explore what that "knowing" is. I don't think
we
> >> "know" enough about it and I think it is a potentially whole source of
> > human
> >> thought and ontology.
> >>
> >> When you say this, I connect with you, in understanding that sense of
> >> recognition - of experience that is on the one hand completely unique
and
> > on
> >> the other inalienable from all human experience, like a wondrous cosmic
> >> tendril that winds through us, is of us and we make it what it is,
across
> >> all time and geography even though our cultures of knowing would lose
> > sight
> >> of this extraordinary human right of existence.
> >>
> >> I am reminded of Alan's beautiful reference to Wordsworth in his
> > manuscript
> >> which I am currently reading:
> >>
> >> "In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute
> >> independent singleness"
> >>
> >> (Forgive me Alan for quoting your reference, I will be quoting you when
I
> > am
> >> finished with the read!).
> >>
> >> So, in reference to this discussion about the power of images to
> > communicate
> >> knowledge, I wanted to dwell on knowledge not as information, but as
this
> >> living stream of a thing we call experience, and note how rich a pool
that
> >> is once we sense it "bodily" and culturally alive within and around
us -
> > and
> >> to advocate for a significant turning towards understanding it and
making
> >> "it" the ground in which we are....
> >>
> >> Logically (instinctively), it is perhaps the most accurate form of
> > knowledge
> >> with which to sense the state of our ecology (sociological and
> > environmental
> >> etc etc) - and potentially the road back/towards being in nature again.
> >>
> >> Lovely to be in the stream with you guys again
> >> Susie
> >>
> >> On 25/1/07 6:59 PM, "Jack Whitehead" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>
> >>> ?
> >>
>
