Field Note #12 - The Field Breathes

Last week, I explored a question:

What if an expanded mind could become home?

Rather than living primarily within constricted thinking and occasionally visiting expansion, what if we could learn the felt geography of expansion well enough to return there again and again if we ever feel like we have left?

So this week, I continued the experiment.

I noticed my mind.

I noticed how my breath moved alongside my mental states.

I noticed when the field seemed to narrow and when I could sense myself returning to the larger field again.

And this practice has been much more transformational for me than I could have predicted.

But along the way, I discovered a nuance to the expansion.

Focus Isn't Necessarily Constriction

At first, I had placed focused attention quite close to constricted thinking.

But as I continued exploring, I realized they aren't the same thing.

I can be in expanded awareness and bring my attention into something very specific without losing the larger field.

This is actually what I do in my own embodied practice.

I do it when I work deeply with another person.

We might bring our attention to one sensation, one movement, one area of the body, one question.

The aperture becomes smaller.

But the field doesn't disappear.

Instead, it feels as though I am inviting the larger field into the smaller aperture.

The breath itself gives me a beautiful way of understanding this.

When we exhale, there is a gathering.

A closing.

A contraction.

But expansion hasn't disappeared.

The exhale still belongs to the whole breath.

Perhaps our awareness can move this way too.

We can open.

Gather.

Focus.

Expand.

The field breathes.

When the Whole Is Forgotten

Constriction feels different to me.

There is a fracturing quality to it.

The larger field is forgotten.

The breath becomes shorter.

Tension is held.

The particular problem, thought or experience can begin to feel like the whole of reality.

So perhaps contraction itself isn't the problem.

Perhaps narrowing isn't the problem.

Perhaps even very precise focus isn't the problem.

The difference I am beginning to feel is whether the whole remains present within the part.

Can I bring my awareness into something very specific while remaining connected to the larger field?

Can I close the aperture without closing myself?

This has become a very different inquiry from simply trying to remain expanded all the time.

Perhaps home doesn't need to remain wide open.

Perhaps home breathes.

The Places That Keep Asking

As I continued working with my expanded mind, I began bringing it into something in my own life that had been quietly persisting.

One of those niggling things.

Functional enough that we can live with it.

Easy enough to work around or push to the side.

And yet it keeps returning.

I have become interested in these places.

Not because every persistent little problem must contain some hidden meaning that needs to be uncovered. 

But sometimes there is rich territory there.

Something keeps asking for our attention.

And rather than narrowing around it—analyzing it, fixing it, or pushing it aside—what happens when we allow the larger field to enter?

This is where the smaller aperture insights became important for me.

We can bring attention inward and remain expanded - and actually this reveals a depth of field.

And as I did this, many things began to unfold.

Connections came through my own body and awareness, through the natural world, through journey states, through ancestors—even during an airplane journey.

Information seemed able to arrive from directions I hadn't anticipated.

The experience became larger than the particular issue through which I had entered.

Three Pieces

As I look back at this unfolding, I can see three things I was working with together.

The first was expanded mind and breath.

Returning to the field.

Allowing breath to help me recognize that larger, balancing state again.

The second was taking ownership of my experience.

There was a shift from experiencing myself primarily as the object of what was happening to becoming the subject of my own experience.

Not:

This is happening to me.

But:

This is my experience. I am here within it. I can meet it.

And interestingly, my expanded mind seemed to support this shift.

I was not trapped inside one isolated piece of the experience. There was space around it, and within that space I could participate differently.

And then there was a third piece.

I asked for assistance.

For me, that meant opening my heart and asking Great Spirit—God—for help.

And I find something beautiful in the relationship between these last two.

Taking ownership doesn't mean I have to do everything alone.

And asking for assistance doesn't mean giving my experience away.

I can stand within my own experience fully...

and open.

This is mine to meet.
I am here.
And I am open to assistance.

These three pieces together opened an unfolding of a pattern I had carried for a long time.

Bringing the Field With Us

Perhaps this is what I am discovering after these weeks of exploration.

Expanded awareness doesn't require us to remain diffuse.

We don't have to float around in a wide-open state and avoid anything specific.

We can enter the particular.

We can focus.

We can investigate.

We can work with something very small.

And we can bring the field with us.

Just as the whole breath remains present through its opening and closing, the larger field can remain present as our attention expands and gathers.

And this changes the question for me.

Instead of asking:

How do I stay expanded?

I find myself asking:

Can I remain connected to the whole as I enter the part?

Can I allow awareness to breathe?

Can I recognize when I have truly moved into constriction—when the field has been forgotten, the breath has shortened, and the aperture has become my whole world?

And when I notice that...

can I remember home?

Perhaps there is something in your own life that has been quietly persisting.

Something functional.

Something you have learned to live around.

Something that keeps asking for your attention.

You might bring the expanded mind there.

Not necessarily to solve it.

Not to search for meaning.

But to allow the larger field to meet it with you.

Breathe.

Take ownership of your experience.

And if you are called to this, open your heart and ask for assistance.

Then listen.

See what arrives.

With love,

Kimba