| Thinker : Musings : Sitting On A Corner | |||||
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Sitting outside a cafe, latté in hand, watching the crowds go by. I'm feeling good. I even have smile on. I'm feeling very present and aware. I begin to get a familiar feeling of being expansive and free. I notice that some few of the people that walk by have the same sort of unreasonable smile on their faces. I notice all the diversity of people that walk past and am amused and awed by all the different worlds that pass. The feeling is a bit like watching those end-of-the-year-in-review video montages the networks do of the year's highlights. You get a big picture of the day-to-day. Those always amuse me or make me cry. Today, I'm amused. The expansive feeling continues and I begin to feel self-conscious: people must be able to see that I'm doing something different. {It's like someone going to a crowded place when they're high: they're paranoid that somehow everyone can look at them and tell they're high and that somehow this is a bad thing to be hidden.) It makes me want to hide the amusement and the awe, to suppress it. Stop it. But what if I let it continue? What if I let it expand more? What if I filled this whole intersection at Second and Mission with the feeling that I am feeling? What if everyone that walked by would feel the same thing. What if I created an enlivened space around me?—people might pick up on the feeling and feel it themselves. They might notice that they are present. They might get out of their own little stories and feel alive for a moment. Maybe then I wouldn't feel uncomfortable anymore. Maybe they would then join me in the present. Here's how it goes:
At first they don't see me. I'm just part of the background they habitually ignore. Then they see me from the outside. They are scared. This is when I feel self-conscious. Then they see me from the same perspective as I see them. To look from the inside, with me, is best. So, all the above makes me ponder further the nature of our perception of the Present. In abstract terms, I see it like a rugby scrum—everyone is pushing in their direction from all sides. The ball is only ever in one place. The people on my street corner have wry smiles, or frowns, are looking for cigarette butts on the sidewalk or thinking about lunch. Together, we create a sort of a reality fog or ambience. Each person has their own fog filter, but we all walk through the ambience created by everyone. (In a way, it's the same old story as with the environment: we all eat everyone else's pollution: so, too, we all contribute to the general quality of the Present.) We each have our own filter, but the base we all react to is the general ambient Present. Now, what am I trying to say when I talk about the Present? I mean the quality of awareness, the feel of the place. How I feel towards myself and the others around me. My sense of safety, the quality of my consciousness.—All these descriptions fail to capture the feeling of it. |
reality
Digital Koans | Look Ahead | Sense the Vibe | The Mentality of Good Science | The New Science of Subjectivity | Yin Grey Yangattention Blessing Placecreation Reality is Fluid | What Good is the News
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First written Thu, Jan 14, 1999 Last published Wed, Jun 2, 1999 |
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