Treatise on Windshield Wipers pt II
As I understand it, and there may well be something lost in translation (often something is lost, but it's ultimately a trade as the new permutation speaks to evolution), this analogy is about a person on a swing and how the effort to engage that swing is like the effort to be aware.
When a person first sits upon a swing, and seeks to encourage movement, they must adjust their center mass. Mass forward equals forward movement which starts with just a rocking, and then as momentum is earned, and the oscillation switches to a pumping action and this, when synchronized with the swaying of the swing propelled by gravity, allows one to articulate along the arc as per the verb. Swing.
This initial energy, difficult and fraught with syncopation, is akin to becoming aware. The struggle like that of a newborn coming to terms with their sensory gates, flailing and struggling.
Once a rhythm is earned and set, this can be utilized to increase the rate of the swing, and, like a pendulum, once a certain amount of energy is put into the equation, minimal input is required for maintenance.
Awareness is like this.
As is the case with any experience, practice makes perfect. That is to say that patterns emerge and the astute among us cleave to those patterns and improve upon them. The patterns that seem to envelop the concept of awareness, to me at least, stem from silence. From a place of slowed vibration. From Peace.
Once you have reached maximum arc, where you find yourself simply leaning into the swing, you experience a couple of things: first, the energy required to maintain your extended arc is minimized as is the physical result when you swing a pendulum due to the gravitational force being greatest at the center of the swing and second, at the start and finish of said arc - you experience weightlessness.
The analogy follows that once you have reached this aforementioned point of minimal effort, a slight tap or push is all that is needed to keep you in this full swing of awareness.
A few years ago I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. Thought I had something to prove and maybe I did, but the experience left me mostly unchanged and served as checked box on the ever growing bucket list. Ever-growing as the time is ever-shrinking. But here now, we're talking complex analogies.
I should have mentioned to the tandem-skydiver at Skydive New England that I get motion-sick. Always have. From the Gravitron at Westbrook Together Days in my pre-teens, I've been a puker. I should have anticipated the G-forces being what they were, but I am allowing myself some grace here as I did manage to avoid tossing my cookies until we got to the ground. I had the dry-heaves for no fewer than 6 hours. Made my buddy drive my car home. Dramamine next time and lesson learned... again I digress.
After we (he) popped our chute, the initial yank wasn't horrible. I went with contacts as I thought I could lose a pair of $100 glasses somewhere over southern Maine and then I'd be in a pickle, so I wore the lenses and brought the eyeglasses, so I had full use of my visual gates to take in the view.
My guy was telling me, as he played with the arc of our descent, that at the end of our swings - like on a swing-set - we would be in 0 gee or what the astronauts (and I guess Katy Perry now) call "null gravity."
Here comes the complexity. At the edge of my swings - where I am unmolested by forces earthly - where I am truly a child of the cosmos and a free body is where I don't feel any nausea. In the pause between the harried rushes of being, I feel mindful, painless, and at one with the world.
When I envision this - when I conceptualize it mentally and capture an image in my mind, I see myself swinging through life with all my sensory portals in degrees of openness, sailing past and through infinite experiences to arrive at the end of my swing.
Here at the end of my swing, I imagine the voice of Susa Talan say "Can you feel your hands?"
And I am aware.
to be continued...
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