19 - Thing and Context
Things exist only in relation to other things; all meaning comes from these relations.
* When reading this book for the first time, it is best to read from the beginning without skipping forward. Otherwise, the intended meaning of some words might not be obvious.
Thing and Context
THING: “Thing” refers to whatever can be experienced, referred to, considered, or even imagined. There is virtually no limit on what the word might refer to.
CONTEXT: “Context” refers to the interrelations among words, ideas, predispositions, conventions, circumstances, memories, habits, environments, and other things as they relate to something being experienced, referred to, and so forth. Reality is the universal context. Your world is a context within the universal. Today is context. Your thoughts right now are context.
Experiences are complex. An experience might be characterized as having five significant aspects:
Universal context.
Awareness.
Attention or interest that is focused on something.
Less attention to or interest in the immediate circumstances.
Inattention and disinterest in regard to other irrelevant or distracting circumstances.
The difference between the thing being experienced and the contexts in which that thing is experienced is a difference in attention and interest. When I am aware of seeing the tree, my attention is focused more on the tree than on other details of the experience; but I am more aware of these other details than I am of the great mass of distant or uninteresting possibilities. Seeing-the-tree is the thing being experienced, while everything else is context. It is a matter of how and to what degree attention and interest are focused.
All things exist only in relation to other things.
In severely traumatic situations attention may become so narrowly focused that it excludes all but the most demanding features. During a trauma event it is difficult for people to think about what is happening; then afterward they have great difficulty recalling many critical details of that experience.
In normal circumstances how does the focusing of your attention determine what you experience and what you remember of it later?
How does this focus change?
How narrow is your focus right now?
How wide is the relevant context of this experience?
What are you ignoring?
You might experience a particular shape as a table, then as pieces of wood, then as colors and shapes, and then as ideas and memories. You might become fixated on an amazing performance.
This text is abstract. Take time to stop thinking about words. Instead, just notice what the words suggest to you as you read them. The real meaning is not present in the words.
Here is a small puzzle related to context. Notice how your focus of attention changes while you consider it.
Nothing is not a thing. Nothing cannot
exist. The words, “it is nothing,” do not
say there is a thing called nothing. So,
what were you before you were born?
Reality is the universal context. Even in the most demanding or traumatic experiences, there is context within context within context in all possible dimensions of experience.
We are nearly always focused on experiencing something, on minimizing attention to peripheral content, and on ignoring content that is irrelevant to our immediate interest.
Can you expand your attention all the way out to the universal context?
Can you reduce your attention to virtually nothing, so that the universal context is completely evident?
The Rain
Look around you. Survey your world. This world that you experience appears only to you and to no other. Your world arose with you in time, only in you, and it will soon be gone forever. What is this world? Of what is it made? From where did it come?
Have you heard of the rain that falls from everywhere at once, that falls equally upon every atom of every world? It falls down from the sky and up from the earth. It falls sideways East to West and West to East simultaneously; North to South and South to North; from all directions everywhere, all at once.
You see the color of the rain as it falls upon your eyes, upon your thoughts, and upon your very being. You taste the flavor of the rain as it falls into your mouth and upon your tongue. You hear the sound of the rain as it falls upon your ears, even as the words and the meanings of words that you hear and use. You feel the rain upon your skin, falling from everywhere; you feel the rain falling outward from the core of you and into your awareness. You smell the rain all around and within you, its fragrance reminding you of your being, knitting all these moments together into this reality.
The rain emerges from in between the atoms and particles, from smaller than the smallest, not favoring any origin over any other. It arises from beyond the farthest limits of all possible worlds.
The rain is one rain in all its forms, arising from one source, raining down equally upon one awareness; and every infinitesimal droplet is unique across the whole universe.
The rain nourishes your will to be, to know, to participate, to do good things, to benefit others, to overcome suffering, to reduce fear and misery, to expand awareness ever further into all possibilities of when and where.
The rain nourishes your will to rise up from plain desires, to transcend hardships and injuries, to reach toward the meaning of the rain itself just as all plants and animals strive toward that same source of all experience.
The rain falls right here this very moment.
And to what end does this rain fall on you?
To fulfill you,
move you,
remind you.
Notice the rain.
Aware of these words,
just being here,
realizing.
With no more words.