The Phenomenal Self pt 6 - Awakening Perception
the Universal Energy at the Heart of Experience
Phenomenological Awakening
Awakening is first and foremost a state of arousal that signals change and transformation and, therefore, carries with it the taste of risk. The psycho-affective rhythm of transformation is between arousal at one end bearing risk, and at the other end, the feeling of recognition of a new emerging self that rises spontaneously from core affect-intensive energies that are vital, creative, and responsively attuned to the environment. The transition here is from socially conditioned repression of feeling, which produces defensive or aggressive emotions, to states of deeper sensitivity without emotional overload.
At the far end of this transition in the feeling mode of experience, affect-intensive energy is so deeply attuned to what is that it becomes the instrument of intuition. We move away from the past and into the flux and flow of the present in-becoming. There is a seamless stream stretching affect between feeling for the past actuals and feeling for(ward)the future potential, and we become aware of the contemporal emergence of experiential flow, which is the liberation from the deterministic attitude of cause and effect into the realization of self as the ‘living center of emergent process.’
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said that reality arises through a series of moments which feel into the past moment as they feel for(ward) the next moment. For Whitehead, the action in-between was nothing at all like the tight wire between the physicists’ cause and effect. Rather, Whitehead thought of this feeling-process—which he called ‘prehension’—as incredibly sensitive, provocative, and loving; and construed it as the long, long moment of possibility, freedom and choice, in the timeless space of becoming, before the actual occasion is concretized into being. If you situated yourself imaginatively inside Whitehead’s process reality, you would experience yourself as a living center of transformational process.
Without a sense of separate self, nevertheless you would feel the act of cause-creating-effect-creating-cause… and in the a-temporal pulsations between cause and effect (actual and potential) you would discover vast promise and freedom. The more you prehended your neighbors and relations, the more extensive you would become, until you felt the in-becoming of one body through the simultaneous presence of many bodies. The more stabilized your prehension, over the long slow moment of feeling, the more expansive you would become, until you realized the in-becoming of one novel moment through the simultaneous presencing of many moments.6
The passive expressions of perception function primarily as projections of image-minded models stored in memory. These fixed schemas, symbolic representations, cultural narratives, and internalized social scripts run automatically and filter perception through them. Therefore, for the most part, we go about participating not so much with reality but with mental representations and narrative ‘loops’ inside our heads. Let me give an example.
A student in our summer SOLE program here at Alderlore was learning about the active and passive expressions of perception. One evening he went for a walk down the drive. A young rabbit hopped in front of him and froze into stillness. It was a lovely evening, and the lush-green and blond grasses were backlit by delicate hues of an August sunset. The scene was exquisite and the student was, for a moment, transfixed. Then he realized that he was not actually participating with what was happening in the moment, but that there was a kind of gap, that he was participating in a Discovery Channel version of what was happening. His affect tone was sentimental, not sensitive. His perception was fuzzy, not clear—he would not be able to describe the details of the rabbit or his surroundings. He then experienced all that drop away and for a brief moment entered authentic participation with all that was arising, moment to moment. He could see the minutest detail of the rabbit’s whiskers, which heightened his own sense of smell. The texture of the grasses was palatable, the subtle play of light, gradient of warmth, the sweet whistle of the breeze—all of his senses came alive and came together to participate. He became aware of the powerful ‘appetitive drive of the senses,’ desire self-fulfilling in perception. It came to him as a moment of insight and clarity. Goethe said:
Each phenomenon in nature, rightly observed, wakens in us a new organ of inner understanding. As one learns to see more clearly, he or she also learns to see more deeply. One becomes more ‘at home’ with the phenomenon, understanding it with greater empathy, concern and respect.
Beautifully felt into and described! If I have tapped into what your experience is and the sense of resonance I feel is tracking accurately: This is where creator and creation are apperceived as one - facilitated by an active and consciousness engagement in the creative process of perception and fluid identification in and as that along with what is perceived. Total immersion in and as That and its emergent process and arisings.
Shinzen Young speaks of the skills necessary to have a 'complete experience' of what is here and now as basis for the development of equanimity and 'happiness independent of conditions'.
First, I need to be aware that my perception and thinking are likely in a state of 'default contraction' that restrict the experience of the moment and perpetuate a cycle of distortion.
Then, to cultivate the concentration that allows the skill to 'organize' my perception and thinking, taking them out into a state of expansion compatible with complete experience. 'Prehension' seems to be an ingredient in this skill if I understand correctly.
Over time, maybe 10-20 years, likely more, one may learn to do that effortlessly :).