Faculty 5: Units
Experiencing
Explore Theories I.n T.ime through direct experience…
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." - Rainer Maria Rilke
Despite a volatile economy, the self-help industry continues to grow strong. Each year, Americans spend billions of dollars on "the search", but what we are looking for is not something that can be bought or sold. The Seeker craves to see, taste,touch, feel, hear, smell "the mystery" as a tangible reality. Given the nature of the ineffable expanse, this is a lofty and elusive goal, easily mistranslated in a variety of interpretations. Some of our most stubborn habits are often times a misguided pursuit in the quest for wholeness. For example: Do we need to visit the end of the earth to know our own limits? Must we climb Mt. Everest to know triumph? Is it necessary to learn how to scuba dive to know depth? The answers to these queries may be an emphatic yes, no or maybe so, but as Rilke advises the young poet,"try to love the questions themselves... at present you need to live the question."
In Curriulum AUM, Faculty 5, cultivates the art of experiencing as an evidential expose of " how do we know?" In a dynamic process similar in spirit to the five aggregates in Buddhism: Rupa, Vedana, Samjna, Samskara and Vijnana, the emprise of knowing is contingent upon the level of consciousness or presence available in the practice. Ultimately, How we choose to investigate the world within and around us shapes our relationship with "the mystery". But Our sense organs alone are not enough to provide proof of the existence of things, we must participate in the process with ever widening perspicacity rather than just go through the motions. When we sharpen our ability to simply notice and be with things, we no longer are dependent upon external stimulation to manufacture "knowing". We can turn inward, and follow currents of truth like the rise and fall of breath or the push and pull in the hands to encounter a whole new intimacy with the here and now. When we can locate and identify our choices in the body we earn a sense of intimacy with our flow of sensations as part of a universal pulse. As Thoreau suggests, "there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright."
Polarity Pairs: Expand/Contract, Seek/Flee
Faculty 5 Sutranym:
Rest, Roam,Rant/Rave! Draft the blueprint, map the points.
- Rest: R.elinquishing E.ffort S.ustains T.raining
- Roam: R.estlessness O.n A M.ission
- Rant: R.adically A.llusioned N.egative T.alk
- Rave: R.adical A.llusions V.oiced E.xitably
- Map: M.indful A.ction P.lan
