Immersion and Pointers

There’s a steady current that flows through the universe.

What seems like very long ago, yet it is but a few years apart, I learned two ways to look at the world. It was not metaphorical, not to me anyway. It wasn’t literal either. It was not an allegory. It was not a simile. It very much was not anything that I can describe using the English language because the language has not been designed for it. And yet I can explain it in the simplest of terms. And yet it may not make a lot of sense to you.

The first way is to look at objects normally. The other way is to look at them immersed. Or in immersion.

Did that make sense? Probably not. I look at the various objects around me. My eyes jump from one object to another. What happens between those two objects? Did I ever care to examine that? A sort of a blank space is it not? How strange I asked myself. My eyes are jumping around like a bird. And only when I land am I fully aware. There must be a better way to look at things. I then tried to hold two things in my view. At the same time. And as I continued to practice that something truly interesting started to happen. It requires a lot of patience, a lot of relaxation. When you continue to just look, without looking at objects you discover something else.

I can’t describe it to you because there aren’t words for it. Expanding consciousness. Immersion. Whatever. This is distinct from the fact that all things are inside my mind. I mean whatever I am aware of at any moment is inside my mind because of my sense organs. That’s simple science. This is something different. My mind and body is inside it. So is everything. I can tap into it at will. And I can tap out at will. All I have to do is go from being relaxed to being normal, from being immersed to being at objectifier.

I can see a beautiful girl and objectify her. I can see a well-built man and check for threat vectors. Or I can see both and the scene as exactly the same. As I said, it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. In immersive mode, I don’t feel attraction or repulsion. I don’t feel much, I simply observe as part of the scenery. Mind completely quiet, awareness present, no judgements like it’s a beautiful day and so on. And at that stage I become aware of something else that is aware of me. Circling, all around. And yet I have never been able to or allowed to escape fully. I have never been able to experience the bliss that is supposed to accompany such experiences either. Some sort of a mental blockage. I stopped doing it because I was told it addicted the last Pope who then died of phlegm disease. Very sticky stuff still comes out of my lungs at times. Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Pneumonia but can’t be drained from the lungs sort of a disease. Terrible the pain when the lungs have to be scraped raw.

Somehow miraculously my lungs are able to expel this phlegm as spit. Just this morning I spat in the sink, came back after my walk and could not drain the spit residue with fast flowing water. Completely stuck. Only sponge can remove it.

That’s the dark side. Light and dark. Light and shadow. Light and shade. As Robert Jordan once said memorably in his novels: Is light the absence of darkness? Is the dark an absence of light?

When we die or get closer to death, the eyes stop jumping around so much. The mind starts to prepare for immersion. The world suddenly looks very different. You might be talking to someone and treating them as an object and suddenly everything is an object and then nothing is. It can be startling. Everything starts to look not as solid as it appears to be. Sound, light, sensation all merges into a unified field. Attention expands. Awareness reaches outside the body walls. That’s when sometimes realization dawns. I am. Oh this is what that meant. Somewhat of an “isness” arises. It is what it is. C’est la vie. This. No that anymore. Just this, just this. Bank accounts are overflowing but can’t take it with you.

I can’t make you see the lodestar or the north star but I can point you to it. The seeing has to be done by you.

There is a steady current that flows through the universe. The current is love.

As Dan Rather might sign off : “Stay steady”

San Diego, California
5:56 am or pm.