Gaia: Time, Space, and Knowledge - TSK in the World

Re: Steve Randall on TSK and Peak Performance

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:36:49 GMT

sherab, I am so glad you will be sticking around...what you experienced with your dancing, and continue to experience, IS a tsk experience, imo...

I find what makes TSK different, is that it is not religious at all (but does not intefer with one's religion), but it is very spiritual and very scientific, and the vision is an infinite opening up...there are no absolutes, just a continuous dance of being which is filled with joy and beauty and myriad possibilities. Being the free spirit that I am I love that tsk is not dictated or 'closed down' by any rules or dogma. While sometimes it might get lonely, due to the fact that there are very few tsk practitioners, I would not exchange the freedom that I feel for anything...the restrictions that I feel are the ones I continue to place upon myself...and if that is the case, then that means I can continue to open them and dance free in Time, Space, and Knowledge...

Integration is important; we are all on our own journey, and I find that tsk allows me to be where I am, and allows the same for others, allowing me to accept that as well...

welcome aboard tsk! will look forward to dialoging with you! always, *

Re: Steve Randall on TSK and Peak Performance

http://symbol.gaia.com — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:54:15 GMT

OK, that was a hastily made request.
In the absence of any response i began to feel that the post might not have much to do with TSK, although it does describe a peak performance experience.
i recognized that I don't have enough experience with TSK methods or the language used to discuss it. I will have to do more reading.

Star, I should mention that the dance workshops were oriented towards cultivating peak experiences on several levels, interpersonal, group participation, and individual performance. it is actually because of that work and other pursuits, that spiritual development did not take a backseat through much of my life. I have been able to translate some of the experiences into other areas of life and adapt to the 'flow' of different work styles.
I will stick around, but it will take some time before i understand what makes TSK different and distinct from other 'methods'

Re: Steve Randall on TSK and Peak Performance

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:27:35 GMT

sherab, i don't know you, but i wont let that stop me...lol...Dance is an excellent way to reach peak or zone experiences...Rumi did it all the time...the very fact that these posts stirred that memory within you is a good sign that you could very well experience it again...

sounds like, you, like most of us, got 'caught up' in other worldly 'have to's' and our spiritual development had to take a back seat...

TSK might be an excellent way for you to address that now, I mean I say might, cuz just b/c I LOVE it, and I do, doesn't mean it resonates with everyone, but you might wanna give it a try...hope you will stick around...it might take Bruce a while but he eventually gets around to answering...if he ignores me too long I post emphatically on his grapevine...LOL...much joy, star...

Re: Steve Randall on TSK and Peak Performance

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:54:01 GMT

Hi, Sherab, I had been planning to respond to you and have just been a bit busy this weekend. I am not sure why you say you do not understand and you want your posts deleted? Would you mind explaining? I ask because if you are leaving the discussion because of the absence of a response to your post (so far), it wasn't because of a lack of interest or resonance, at least on my part. I enjoyed your descriptions and agree that what TSK explores, at least in part, are just the sort of shifts in temporal and spatial experience you describe.

TSK, per se, does not address the being "in the Zone," at least not directly; but I think it is a good area to explore via the TSK approach, given, as Steve points out, the phenomenological dimensions of reported "Zone" experiences.

I believe I've had a number of Zone-like experiences, with some of the strongest arising through playing music. Entering a space where playing seems to happen almost magically, arising out of a timeless accord.

Re: Steve Randall on TSK and Peak Performance

http://symbol.gaia.com — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:36:51 GMT

This is really cool But I guess I just don't understand.
Please delete my posts from this thread.
Good luck with TSK
sherab

Re: Steve Randall on TSK and Peak Performance

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:49:23 GMT

Thnx Bruce! I really enjoyed reading this...

I loved and really related to what he said here...

"In the zone there can be a kind of merging or fusion or unity of what ‘normally’ feels separate or independent. Our ‘normal’ frame of reference–the sense of an observer or subject or perceiver separate and distinct from what’s observed or perceived or experienced–may be absent. There can be a multidimensional luminosity that accompanies knowing instead of preoccupation with particular content from a single ‘point of view’. There might be a sense of timelessness, or of time slowing down or stopping instead of the typical sense of time flowing at a constant and unchangeable rate. We might experience many memories simultaneously instead of one at a time. Things may seem effortless in the zone, rather than requiring the effort, strain, or struggle of other times. There can be an absence of felt distance, along with a lack of the sense of here contrasted with there. ‘Normal’ feelings related to size and ‘the world’ may not be present. Things may seem dreamlike or transparent rather than having their ‘normal’ sense of reality, thickness, density, or substantiality."

being in the zone basically boils down to our perspective being unrestricted by all those things that have nothing to do with being in the zone...lol...

awesome! always, star...

Re: Steve Randall on TSK and Peak Performance

http://symbol.gaia.com — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:41:47 GMT

This is interesting and i will read more.
One of the most "in the zone" experiences, I've had is almost completely a blank to me now. and even when i remember the experience, the details seem impossible.
When I was around twenty-some, I started taking dance classes with a group that specialized in contact improv and dance meditation. Most of the classes were basic dance, maintaining a connection to breath and gravity, as motivations. I took the boring hadr classes as well as the touchy feely workshops, and one day I showed up for a workshop with one other dancer. This was supposed to start off as a moving meditation on the floor, slowly rising up. Maybe a little like a square dance except the caller is saying, "now feel your breath filling your body lifting you up." Later she would say, "Now find a partner and pretend you are the image in the mirror." It was very interactive, but with just two students some things did not need to be said.
In the end, This youg woman and i sat down on the floor with the two musicians (guitar and tabla-dagga) and the instructor, (who also played a droning old analog synth,) and we just took off our masks or put them on, i guess we just had to come back to be whoever we were when we weren't doing that art. And it was art even if no one else was there to look.
My partner was a very talented and well trained ballet dancer. I think both of us were some how at the edge of our own physical and mental abilities. There were times we turned towards each other and times we turned away. I could say the say the same for the musicians who were in the middle of the dance floor.
I have been able to draw on this one experience in my life, but i rarely speak of it. There is nothing to say.
About a year later I was in a different world, and on the first day of my new job, the foreman passed me a joist and said "we're going Up There," and the next thing I knew I was thirty feet off the ground, walking on a 2x4 carrying one end of a roof truss. One slip and three men would fall.

So, I'm not a dancer now. And I don't build houses. Most recently I worked in an open jewelry studio casting precious metals. Ive worked a lot in Publishing (newspapers, phonebooks) and also in Public Exhibitions, (renaissance faires, children's museums).
The one thing that I understand is the flow. On that construction crew, we called it "being psychic" where each person knew what part of the job we were doing without having to talk about it.
I apologize for just jumping in here. I have not read Tulku's book. (TSK) I saw it in a store in 2006 when i first joined Gaia, and I didn't buy it because i didn't want to read too much outside what the Lamas in my own sangha were saying.
Anywasy, I can relate to the non ordinary aspects of 'flow'where time slows, space becomes something solid and objects seem transparent.
I hope thats what were talking about.

Steve Randall on TSK and Peak Performance

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:00:39 GMT

TSK writer and teacher, Steve Randall, has a new blog that may be of entry to members of this group. In his most recent entry, What's the Zone of Peak Performance?, he examines a number of accounts of experiences of 'the Zone' to identify possible "core aspects of experience [that may] both carry inherent fulfillment and facilitate optimal productivity."

LeBron James' Experience of T-S-K

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Sun, 31 May 2009 01:21:37 GMT

An interesting little clip from LeBron James. The TSK of "the Zone."

Re: Participatory Knowing

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:45:57 GMT

this was interesting Bruce; thnx for posting it...*

Participatory Knowing

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:55:14 GMT

The following essay touches on a number of themes we've explored in different threads and blogs recently. I was going to copy some of its text into this thread, but the formatting is weird and it comes out mixed up and with large gaps when I try it. So, here's a link instead:

Participatory Knowing: A Story-Centered Approach to Human Systems, by Jack Petranker

Re: Derrida on Being, Presence, Time

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:39:30 GMT

lol...

Re: Derrida on Being, Presence, Time

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:35:42 GMT

Near the end of Of Grammatology, on pg 314, Derrida speaks about the "impossibility of formulating the movement of supplementarity within the classical logos," supplementarity, in communicated terms, being the otherness-ground to which that classical logos always refers, the trace from which that logos arises. About this supplement and the impossibility of formulating its movement, he says:

Of course the designation of that impossibility escapes the language of metaphysics only by a hairsbreadth.

This guy's as misguided about his theory as Wilber is about his own. Derrida and Wilber are mirror images in this respect. Both claimed to create systems beyond metaphysics. Both fooled themselves.

Re: Derrida on Being, Presence, Time

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:29:10 GMT

Watching that Derrida clip, I could feel a rising irritation knowing the hours I'd spent reading and trying to understand Of Grammatology, among other of his texts. "You mean all those words come down to this? The negative othering of thought?" Fuck. Just say it for crying out loud.

I agree with Chomsky's opinion of such as Derrida. I also doubt that my relative inability to understand Derrida's writing is due to mental incapacity.

Re: Derrida on Being, Presence, Time

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:17:14 GMT

Actually, "the trace" is Wilber's states.

   Derridathink --->    Wilberthink
  anterior ---> prior
  question/Being ---> form
  Other ---> Emptiness
  writing ---> manifestation
  the trace ---> states
  contruct ---> AQAL
  decon-movement ---> involution

Re: Derrida on Being, Presence, Time

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:32:23 GMT

The question concerning the question, "I didn't invent it, it came from my readings."

"What do we mean by the word being? Is there not something presupposed in the way we come to understand Being? That's not something I invented ..."

Says it twice.

Trace in writing, the very condition of non-presence of the present, in order to access the present as such there must be an experience of the trace, a rapport to something else, to the Other, to something other than Being, essentially to other-than-anything-said-ness.

Sounds like Wilber's Emptiness where anterior (prior) to the question and questioning (form) is an "experience" of the Other (capitalized, nonetheless), the trace (manifestation) of which, in writing (evolution), gives rise to deconstruction (AQAL).

"That's not something I invented."

Non-inventedness-in-itself, "the experience of a return to something else," the extra-deconstructible.

Anywayyyyyyy, apart from all that, I like his sense of other and have had moments where I've experienced time and present and space and human and life and non-lfie and matter as othered, as "just" time, ie, viewed as from without, "just" the present, viewed as from without, and so on. Fascinating perceptions.

Re: Derrida on Being, Presence, Time

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:32:10 GMT

Good question.

I'll get back to it.

Derrida on Being, Presence, Time

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:56:04 GMT

The following video of Jacques Derrida addresses some questions that I thought would be interesting to members of this pod (being, presence, time, questioning/inquiry, etc).

What Comes Before the Question?

Space Creation

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:19:02 GMT

Following is an excerpt from a paper being written by astrophysicist Piet Hut and philosopher Ron Bruzina:

Space and time form the stage on which a scientific description of the world unfolds. All forms of matter and energy are seen to be structured by and positioned in space and time.

At first sight, energy and matter seem to be visitors that somehow occupy space. While they need space, as actors need a stage to act on, they themselves do not seem to be part of the stage as such. However, this first impression is not correct.

We all know that matter is made out of a few types of relatively elementary particles, such as neutrons, electrons and protons. In itself, it is remarkable that all the different forms of matter we encounter can be seen to be built out of only a few elementary building blocks. But this fact becomes even more remarkable when we realize the significance of this statement: it means that space is responsible for the differences between the different forms of `substance' we encounter in our life!

Isn't it marvelous, to realize such a high degree of unity, underlying the vast diversity of materials and processes in our physical world? Whether glass or stone, wood or water, smoke or mud, all these materials are manifestations of the same three types of building blocks. The differences between different materials are simply consequences of the different configurations of the electrons, neutrons, and protons. These three particles are all that is needed to build up the nearly hundred different types of atoms found in nature. These atoms, in turn, form the building blocks for a vastly larger variety of molecules. But for all the differences in appearance between materials, science tells us that we are dealing with the same substance. The different properties are consequences only of differences in the configurations of the building blocks.

In a very real sense, then, one could assign the properties of different materials not to the protons, neutrons, and electrons they are built out of, but rather to the arrangement of empty space in between those building blocks. A strange notion, that all we see around us in its bewildering variety is due largely to spatial, rather than material properties. Sticks and stones and bricks and bones are different by the different way in which the same constituents use space in a different way. So much for the notions of material substance we grow up with, based on our very real and tangible experience.

Piet posted the excerpt above on the TSK online forum. A response to the posting was sent by molecular biologist Cynthia Smagula:

I strongly relate to what you are saying from my own experience as someone who has had the good fortune to stand at the cutting edge of molecular and structural biology....I find that when contemplating the three-dimensional spatial organization of a protein structure that there is invariably a moment when I'm no longer looking at that particular read-out of a molecule or at that particular representation of atoms and of the bonds between them, but I have made a transition to another dimension, the space between the atoms. At this moment I always have the feeling of weightlessness, of being one with space instead of grounded in space. It's as if I experienced myself at the molecular level and then spontaneously moved past that limit to the limitless. There is always a combined sense of quiet euphoria, elation and relief, as if to say, that even the most highly refined, precise knowledge of the molecules of life is not all there is, there is more: life is immersed in a vast field of limitless creation.

TSK and the Public Self

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:49:48 GMT

I've been blogging recently on group inquiry, intersubjectivity, and collective awakening (along with several other Zaadzters interested in the subject), and I just posted an entry in which I explored one way TSK might approach this issue. My blog series is entitled, Nondual Community: The Flowering of Intersubjectivity, of which this piece is the second part.

I thought I'd also post the essay here, in case it is of interest to any members of this pod.

The Public Self

The Time-Space-Knowledge vision (TSK) does not focus specifically on the topic of intersubjectivity. Instead, it explores the creative interplay of knowledge in time and space that gives rise to distinctions such as "self" and "other." Mining underneath these categories of thought, however, TSK undermines the absoluteness they assume in our self-understanding and thereby transforms our being-together, calling our selves out of their privileged (though ultimately impoverished) positions of privacy and isolation.

According to TSK, when we take the conventional self to be the "knower," the possessor of knowledge, we enact a story of alienation: the self stands apart from not-self, removed from the world both temporally and spatially, separate even from knowledge (which it must collect from "outside" and horde "inside," as its possession, if not its very identity). Claiming to be an occupant of a particular point in space and time (here and now), the self is experienced as fundamentally different from both. When it does not take them for granted, as the unacknowledged background of its concerns, the bystander self tends to exist in an oppositional relationship to them, as either their owner or victim.

Discussing the temporal impact of the model that establishes the self as the owner of experience, Tarthang Tulku explains,

For this basic structure to work, the self must adopt a specific position that puts it outside of experience. Thus, while experience is inseparable from the flow of time, and is in fact the way that the flow presents itself, the self is an `outsider' with respect to the temporal dynamic.

As an `outsider,' the self occupies the specific role of bystander, unaffected by the passing of time. The objects and forms that it identifies and defines are also `outsiders,' but in a different sense: Like rocks in a stream, they are in time, carried or carved by its flow, yet separate from the flow itself.

`Outsiders' form the self's `world,' and self and world together comprise the whole of existence. Past, present, and future, considered as static structures, are among the `outsiders' available to be known; time as an active dynamic medium cannot be grasped directly, and so is largely overlooked. (Knowledge of Time and Space, pp. 24-25)

This condition of estrangement is the characteristic mark of the private self. Modern liberal democracies are founded on the primacy of the private self. As Steve McCarl, a TSK practitioner and political theorist points out, the result of this form of social organization is that the public becomes an arena in which individuals contract to pursue and protect their personal rights with the "most minimal sense of 'we' possible." It is a functional "we" designed to serve the interests of private selves. There are, of course, advantages to our modern self-centered "public sphere," allowing for freedoms which were not possible in the mythic membership societies of the past, but these freedoms come at a cost. The self, in winning and maintaining its independence, is cut off from the whole in fundamental ways which are frequently difficult to identify.

Drawing on the ideas of Hannah Arendt, TSK teacher Jack Petranker argues that the self can emerge from its condition of isolation and become a truly public self. However, in contrast to Arendt's model, in which the self finds its authenticity by acting in public (in a self-aggrandizing manner), TSK suggests that the self may "move into the open" in a different way: by relinquishing the claim to be the owner of knowledge. When the self's relationship to time, space, and knowledge - to the ongoing presentation of experience - is opened and thawed, when the self is seen not as the owner of knowledge but the unique occasion of a boundless knowingness which has no position, the self "joins" the world in dynamic co-emergence, moment by moment. In TSK, this shift is described as moving time-space-knowledge to the center.

"Now a shift becomes possible. Time itself can become the conductor, presenting the ongoing embodiment of knowledge in space....We can discover the magical, magnificent mechanism of time's conducting, in which knowledge is inherent in all arising and each act of taking form. We stand at the gateway of inward knowledge....Turning inward, we see that the presentations of objective time and its subjective witness are themselves ways in which time conducts knowledge into being. Thus, the witness is free to continue with its testimony. Each claim it makes expresses a knowledge that does not depend on the witness in any way. Seen as claims, without regard to their content, the proclamations of the witness are manifestations of knowledge. They do not need to be rejected, for they stand revealed with a new `lightness': as richly creative and wholly lucent expressions of a timing inseparable from knowledgeability. (pp. 113-114)"

The public self, Petranker argues, is a self that is always beginning anew. Instead of defending the pre-established, it is willing to call its own positions into question. The "positions" of the self amount to an appropriation of that which has no owner: the effulgence of knowledge. The movement of the self into the public is a move into undefendedness, into intimacy. "In each moment," Tarthang Tulku writes, "we can choose and cherish knowledge in all appearance. We can awaken our sensitivity and react newly to what arises; can cut each instant rejection of knowledgeability and inhabit what is happening."

The TSK tradition has a number of exercises for effecting this sort of transformation - too many to cover here. An important, "informal" practice that is common to several of the approaches I've been discussing recently, is simply moving from thought to thinking - what TSK describes as "thinking the whole." It is a move from identification with content to sensitive, full-bodied attunement to the process of thinking. Thoughts are "thawed" to reveal an unrecognized, and untapped, lucency.

For anyone interested, I will close with several brief descriptions of exercises which might be useful as group practices - as ways for groups to deepen in intersubjective inquiry and contemplative dialogue. The emergence of the "public self" in TSK is a subtle but profound movement. It is not a move which requires us to expose ourselves without reservation in a group context, or never to defend a particular insight or conviction. Rather, it is a move which cuts through the aloofness of the self's habitual positioning, and which reveals self and other as ongoing, creative presentations - gifts we are constantly receiving and exchanging. Appreciating the interplay that gives rise to our many voices and positions, we begin to "speak to mutual concerns," as Tarthang Tulku says; "We think less in terms of ‘I' and more in terms of ‘I and you', of ‘we' or ‘you and they together.'"

The first exercise, Letting Go, is a simple one that works a subtle change. If practiced in a group setting, it can invite deeper listening, openness, and playful intimacy.

Let the flow of thoughts and experience arise naturally, looking for the sense, the implicit claim, that what you are experiencing or thinking about ‘exists.' Whether you experience this directly or not, after a while begin to relate to what arises instead in terms more natural to time, space, and knowledge. As experience emerges, merge with its emerging. As space appears, greet it in boundless wonderment. As stories are told, read out the knowledge their telling proclaims. Relax all efforts to make progress, to possess or control, to succeed, or to understand. Enjoy the unbounded energy of time and the silent clarity of inquiry.

The second exercise I want to share is "part B" of a several-part practice called, Choosing the Unknown. It is another rather subtle practice, but one which is important from a TSK perspective, as it puts us more intimately in touch with the creativity of time and allows us to "dance the finity of time's presentation." Which includes the positionings of the (formerly) private self.

Bring to mind the future, allowing it to be completely indeterminate. Instead of thinking about this or that coming event, see if you can let the unknownness of the future come to the foreground. As a gateway into this indeterminacy, you could reflect on the ongoing transformations through which living being evolves.

Within the steady flow of linear time, there are movements we would consider favorable and others that are unfavorable. Yet if you welcome the future without regard to specifics, you may become aware of a dynamic that unfolds naturally toward improvement.

The more you relax any preoccupations or concerns, the more you may notice this evolutionary thrust in your own experience. For instance, you may go toward being more precise and accurate in your thinking and planning, or toward more stability, richer experience, or moral clarity. Welcome and cherish these tendencies. Gradually you may sense that conventional time itself can evolve toward a different, more satisfying presentation.

The third practice, Appearance Only, could be practiced during group dialogue, or in natural or arranged sessions of silence between periods of discussion.

A. As experience arises, let yourself sink ‘beneath' the content of the mind, turning toward the sense of illumination within which that content appears. As you contact thoughts and feelings at this deeper level, cultivate a clarity that lets you see how you take up each new position.

B. As each position emerges, enter into it, growing intimate with its byways. Look for a sense of illumination within experience, truly unknown, filled with lucent awareness.

C. Instead of abiding within this illumination, set forth again. Open and embody all that you encounter, letting light be your guide. Eventually, there may be a shift in which you become light, and the usual voices fall silent.

~*~

(For anyone interested, the first and third exercises are taken from Jack Petranker's newly released TSK study guide, When It Rains, Does Space Get Wet?, rather than directly from the TSK books.)