Field Note #11 - Where is Home

Lately, I have been observing my own mind.

Not so much what I am thinking, but the way my thinking feels.

And I have begun noticing two very different experiences.

One feels constrictive.

My attention narrows. It pinpoints. I become focused on the problem, the task, the thing that needs to be understood or figured out.

The other feels expansive.

There is more space.

I receive more.

Connections appear that I wasn't necessarily looking for.

Creativity begins to move.

And I love this state.

As I began exploring these two experiences, I realized that I already knew them.

I had been teaching them through the eyes for many years.

Camera Eyes and Searchlight Eyes

I sometimes call our two ways of looking camera eyes and searchlight eyes.

Searchlight eyes pinpoint.

We locate something. Focus upon it. Examine it.

We use this kind of vision particularly when reading, looking at screens, searching for something or performing a task that requires precision.

It has a purpose, though I propose it is over-used.

There is another way of seeing.

With camera eyes, we soften the pinpoint and allow the visual field to open.

Rather than looking at one thing, we begin receiving a much wider field of vision.

More light enters from more directions.

The periphery becomes available.

And something else happens too.

More of our senses begin to participate.

We hear differently.

We sense space differently.

We become more aware of movement, sound, sensation and the environment around us.

We aren't necessarily paying less attention.

Perhaps we are receiving more.

Receiving the Field

This was also something I worked with when I taught shamanic consciousness.

Walking through a forest, for instance, we could move through the environment searching, naming and identifying...

or we could allow the senses to open.

Instead of searching for information in one direction, we could become receptive to information arriving from many directions.

Sound.

Movement.

Light.

Sensation.

The body.

The living environment.

Something we weren't looking for could reach us.

And I realize now that this is also very much how I work with people.

When I am with someone, I don't necessarily focus intensely upon them and analyze everything they are saying.

I open.

I listen.

I receive.

Their words are there, but so is everything else that is happening in the living moment.

I am completely present, but my attention isn't necessarily pinpointed.

I am sensing into the larger field and receiving my client.

And recently I realized:

I can think this way too.

Constrictive and Expansive Thinking

Constrictive thinking has a purpose.

Sometimes we need to narrow the field.

We need to solve something, organize, analyze, make a decision or complete a particular task.

But I have begun to notice what happens when I stay there.

My experience becomes smaller.

My body feels different.

There is a quality of stress, effort and lockdown.

Expansive thinking feels very different to me.

The field opens.

I feel more receptive.

More connected.

My breath eases.

Creativity becomes available.

And my body itself feels different.

There is more space.

I began wondering how often many of us are living within constrictive thinking as our normal state.

We wake up and begin thinking about what needs to be done.

What needs to be solved.

What might go wrong.

What we need to remember.

We move from one pinpoint to another.

And then occasionally, we seek expansion.

A vacation.

Time in Nature.

A meditation.

A retreat.

A glass of wine.

Perhaps an entheogenic experience, another teacher or another spiritual doorway.

Something that allows the field to open for a while.

And then we return.

Back to the problems.

Back to the analysis.

Back to constriction.

And this has led me to a question that I find fascinating:

What if we have made constriction our home and expansion our vacation?

 

Where Is Home?

What if we flipped this?

What if expansive consciousness became the state we knew as home?

Then constrictive thinking could simply be a tool.

We could narrow our attention when something requires it.

Use the searchlight.

Do the task.

See the problem.

And then release back into the larger field.

Field.
Pinpoint.
Field.

Perhaps the difficulty isn't constriction itself.

Perhaps we have simply forgotten to come back out of it.

And what I am discovering in my own life is that I can feel the difference.

I can recognize when I have entered constriction.

And when I notice it, I don't necessarily have to solve my way out.

I can release.

I can soften my eyes.

I can sense into the field again.

And something changes.

Expansion doesn't feel like somewhere I have gone.

It feels like somewhere I have returned.

 

Can You Feel Yourself Healing?

There is another dimension of this experience that particularly interests me.

When I move into expansive thinking and field perception, I can feel a change in my body.

There is a quality that I recognize as healing.

Space.

Receptivity.

A sense of my body returning toward homeostasis—toward repair and regeneration.

And this has led me to perhaps the most important question in this Field Note:

Can you feel when your body is in a healing mode?

Not as an idea.

Can you actually sense it?

What does it feel like in your body?

What happens to your breath?

Your eyes?

Your hearing?

Your thoughts?

Your sense of the space around you?

And can you also sense when you have moved away from it?

Because if we can begin to perceive these differences, our own felt experience gives us information.

We can begin to notice what supports this state and what continually takes us away from it.

And perhaps that awareness can begin to participate in how we navigate our lives.

 

Learning the Geography of Home

Perhaps this is really what I am exploring.

Learning the geography of home.

Not intellectually.

Through felt sense.

Becoming familiar enough with this place that I recognize it.

I know this place.

I know how my eyes feel here.

I know how my breath moves here.

I know what happens to my thinking.

I know how creativity feels.

I know how I receive the world.

I know how my body feels here.

And perhaps we can also learn to recognize when we have left.

Not as failure.

Simply as information.

Ah. I know this place too.

The searchlight is on.

The field has narrowed.

And when that narrowing is no longer needed, perhaps we can remember the way back.

The vacation, the retreat, the teacher, the meditation, the entheogenic experience, time in Nature—these may all be doorways.

They may remind us.

They may allow us to recognize something we had forgotten.

But perhaps expansion isn't somewhere we need to keep going.

Perhaps it is somewhere we can learn to return.

And so I leave you with three simple explorations:

Notice the difference between camera eyes and searchlight eyes.

Become curious about the felt experience of expansive and constrictive thinking.

And then ask yourself:

Can I perceive when my body is in a healing state?

Can I learn its geography?

Can I recognize my way home?

 

With love,

Kimba