The Blind Spot

and the relief of having no control

There is something here right now that is beyond doubt, something that requires no belief and that cannot be denied. We all know this, effortlessly. If we had to label what this is, we might call it being, or aware presence, or experiencing, but of course the living actuality cannot be captured by any words. But we cannot deny being here, present and aware, and the fact that something is showing up. Any ideas we have about who or what any of this is can be doubted, but not the bare actuality.

When asked that proverbial question, who or what are you?, in the first instant when the question registers, for a split second, the mind goes blank. That is probably the closest we can come to the nonconceptual bare truth: open, wordless, clueless, not knowing. Bare presence. Just this. Undeniable but impossible to pin down. And then, in the blink of an eye, thought begins automatically searching its rolodex of past information and spewing out possible answers that have been learned over a lifetime: I’m Joan Tollifson, a human being, and then all the stories and identities that go with that, or maybe the rolodex offers a spiritual answer: I’m boundless awareness or pure consciousness.

If attention turns to direct experience to explore who or what I am, it typically looks back (or deep inside) to find what exactly it is to which this word “I” most fundamentally refers. This isn’t an exploration carried out by thinking, but one that relies solely on open attention or awareness. Maybe the attention finds a sensation in the chest or the head, but then what is aware of that? So the attention keeps backing up, or going deeper, looking for the ultimate perceiver, the True I, the eye (I) that cannot see itself, and it finds NOTHING! There is no “I” inside here to be found, and there is no actual center to experiencing, and there is no real boundary between inside and outside. And although no “I” is found, there is EVERYTHING—present experiencing—the whole show. So it becomes apparent that this “I” is at once both no-thing and everything—this whole happening, undivided by any of these words, just this!

This realization is a direct, immediate, wordless, experiential insight, but it morphs automatically into a series of words and concepts that we have most likely already learned. So then, whether the rolodex tells me I’m Joan Tollifson, a human being, or whether it tells me I am pure consciousness, in both cases it is now to some degree a bunch of abstract ideas, categories, labels and acquired information, putting imaginary dividing lines around what is actually an indivisible, interdependent, ever-changing, infinitely diverse, utterly ungraspable and unresolvable, seamless happening.

Once we know language, we can’t ever return to the wordless state of a newborn baby who has not yet learned to see chairs and tables. Presumably, the infant sees only shapes, colors and movements. It hasn’t learned where to draw the imaginary boundary lines and what categories to put things in. It has no story yet about being a person in a world, or being an awareness beholding appearances.

But once we know language, the boundless undivided flow of sensory-energetic experiencing will inevitably be shaped and seemingly divided up to some degree by the conceptual overlay that reifies, abstracts and interprets what appears. Chair, table, dog, airplane, bird song, consciousness, awareness, content of awareness—the labels we have learned will pop up and we will see, hear or imagine the “things” and the divisions that we’ve learned to see, hear and imagine. The apparently formed world will automatically appear.

Thankfully, it is possible to question our beliefs, to see concepts for the over-simplified abstractions that they are, and to open to this presence in a way that is fresh and free from thought. We can, for example, look at an ordinary object such as a chair in a way that sees past the labeled form and appreciates what appears as simply an infinitely rich display of color, texture, light and so on. And the same can happen with all other forms of sensory experiencing. We can listen to traffic sounds in the way we might listen to music. We can become sensitive to the difference between the conceptual maps and the living territory they describe.

But short of a brain injury, we can’t completely stop seeing the apparently formed world created by language, and we don’t need to. That world is also a dimension of what is. The problem comes with believing and identifying with these thought-generated abstractions and interpretations and mistaking the conceptual maps for the living territory itself. That can indeed be the source of immense suffering, confusion and conflict. But importantly, even that suffering, confusion and conflict is a movement of life—and nothing is ever really separate from everything else.

Our usual way of conceptualizing our life is to think that we are in the driver’s seat of our bodymind, steering the car, so to speak. But science tells us there is actually a split second time delay in perception, so a more accurate picture would be that we are looking out the rear window of the car. We don’t know where we’re going; we’re seeing where we’ve just been. We may have a pretend steering wheel back there, but it’s not connected to anything. We’re not in control. And we only seem to be going somewhere, and only in the story. Here-Now is timeless and immovable.

We are Here-Now, but like the eye that cannot see itself, this ever-present immediacy is too close to be perceived or experienced. Here-Now isn’t an object, a substance, or a form of any kind. And all experiences are of the past. They can be enjoyed, like a good movie, but if taken too seriously or identified with, suffering and confusion will be the result.

Science also tells us that in the human eye, there is a blind spot where the retina meets the optic nerve, creating a spot in our visual field about the size of an orange held at arm’s length, a spot where there is actually no visual information. And yet, none of us experiences this absence. It is mysteriously filled in by the brain, as if nothing were missing.

Each of us sees a unique world, and yet, even if we know better intellectually, we are in some way deeply convinced that there is a solid, substantial, persistent, observer-independent, objective reality "out there" apart from us, and we all tend to believe that our own view of this reality is correct. And it is correct as our way of seeing. The only problem is that we each assume that we are all seeing the same thing, the same objective reality, and therefore, we assume our view is right and those who see it differently are wrong. How we each see the world is conditioned by our nature and nurture—our life experiences, genetics, cultural surroundings, the language we speak, and so on. We all have blind spots, places we can’t actually see, and our conditioning fills them in.

If we take up meditative or contemplative exploration, we find that none of our usual assumptions holds up to scrutiny. The tree I can see from my window is different every day, and actually every second. It looks, feels and is different for me than it is for the birds, insects, squirrels, lizards, worms, soil, roots, branches, leaves, dew drops—to say nothing of the view of the tree we’d get with quantum physics. Which tree is “the real thing”? And do we ever find a tree (or anything else) outside of consciousness or present experiencing?

When we’re considering different perspectives on the nature of reality or on hot button social and political issues, we all have a unique viewpoint, and metaphorically speaking, we all have blind spots that get automatically filled in by our often unconscious assumptions and biases. And yet we think that what we believe is “reality” itself.  When our view of things is challenged or questioned, it can feel as if our very life is somehow being threatened. Hot button issues involving race, gender, sexual orientation, class, reproductive rights, national boundaries, and so on can trigger primitive survival instincts because in many ways, they are (or can be) life and death issues, and for many of us, they are connected to deep experiences of pain and injustice. It’s no wonder we have serious misunderstandings, disagreements, conflicts and wars!

We will inevitably suffer in this way when we stay on the level of what seems to be happening in the story, without recognizing the blind spots in our experience, or the fact that everything we are seeing is a unique movie that no one else can see, or the fact that whatever steering wheel we think we have is not actually connected and neither is anyone else’s, or the fact that our identity as a character in a movie full of other characters is a kind of imagination or dream-like appearance constructed from ever-changing, kaleidoscopic Rorschach blots of unresolvable, ungraspable, sensory-energetic information. When we believe that what we imagine in the Rorschach blots is how reality actually is, we are going to be in conflict with anyone who imagines something different in the blots, and this can easily feel threatening to us. This “other” person seems to be discounting, disbelieving, invalidating or not seeing reality as “I” believe it is, and to the degree that “I” am identified with “my” view, that can feel deeply upsetting. It throws our whole existence into question.

What to do?

Whatever happens, whatever is done, is a movement of life itself. The little “me” (the imaginary separate self, the character in the movie) can’t decide to be anything other than exactly what it is in each moment, which never stays the same. We do what life moves us to do, and we can no more “decide” to do otherwise than a wave can move independently of the ocean. We don’t create our interests, urges or abilities. To really see this is to have compassion for ourselves and everyone else being exactly as we are in each moment.

Judgment, blame, guilt, shame and vengeance arise from the illusion of free will. But in order to function, we must to some degree speak and act as if there is choice—for example, we tell our child to look both ways before crossing the street, and we reprimand them when they don’t. But all of that happens choicelessly. So the absence of free will doesn’t mean we can’t educate and socialize our children, make suggestions to our friends, require things from our employees, protest against injustices, or “decide” to see a therapist or take up meditation. It’s just that whatever we are moved to do is the only possible and could not, in this moment, be otherwise. Everything, without exception, is a happening of the whole universe.

Through such awareness-based avenues of exploration as meditation, somatic work, psychotherapy and so on, we may begin to see through the beliefs and ideas that limit us in unnecessary ways, and we may wake up more and more to the immediacy of the non-conceptual dimension. We may learn to listen more openly to ourselves and others, to be more sensitive to the felt textures of experience, to notice in ever more subtle ways when we are getting upset or triggered and how this manifests in the body. Exploring the body (or any apparent form) in a sensory-energetic, meditative way will reveal that there is actually no body (and no other form) in the ways we think there is (no solid, persisting, independent things), and that this presence that we are is actually shapeless, boundless and permeable to the whole universe. We are literally no-thing and everything.

So I’m all for such activities and explorations if one is drawn to them—and the best of them will eventually reveal the illusory nature of the separate self—the apparent thinker, author, chooser, actor, observer—the one who imagines that “I’m doing all this,” and that, “I’m a hopeless case,” or “I’m an Awakened One!” or “I’m a caterpillar hoping to someday become a butterfly,” or “I’m not as advanced as so-and-so.” It may be seen very clearly that the apparent subject (the “me”) to which all such thoughts refer is a kind of mirage in an imaginary story.

With luck, the identification with this movie character and all its views, opinions, preferences and ideas will loosen and may eventually dissolve. Views, opinions, preferences and ideas will almost certainly still be here, but without the identification and the attachment. Efforts at grasping and controlling everything may fall away more and more, and we may come to know ourselves as what we have actually always been: the unfindable Now—absolute zero, no-thing and everything, the aware presence behind all the masks, vast openness, intelligence-energy, this whole ever-changing, interdependent, multidimensional, holographic display, exactly as it is.

We may discover that there is truly nothing to grasp and no one in need of any improvement or enlightening—that all separation is illusory. We may find that nothing needs to happen, or could happen, other than exactly what is happening, and that what we imagine, think or believe is only ever a fleeting interpretation of the disappearing Rorschach patterns of past sensory-energetic information vanishing from view in a rear window with a giant blind spot. What we truly are is life itself—limitless, boundless, shapeless, without beginning or end.

But as long as we take ourselves to be the character driving the car in the movie-story, and as long as we mistake what we imagine in the Rorschach patterns for an objective, observer-independent reality that actually exists “out there,” there will inevitably be suffering, confusion and conflict. And we can’t make any of this stop happening. Our willful, result-oriented efforts to do so only reinforce the deficiency story, the sense of separation, the belief that “this isn’t it,” that something else needs to happen, and the illusion of being an independent “me” with a steering wheel struggling to control myself and the world. However hard we work at self-improvement or saving the world, when we are coming from this perspective of separation, division and encapsulation, it will inevitably be frustrating and disappointing. And yet, all of this is a movement of life, even the apparent mistakes.

The apparent process of so-called awakening is simply the present moment seeing through and dissolving of delusion as it arises, and the growing realization that even delusion is nothing other than a movement of this unicity that cannot be divided up. In the realization that all separation is illusory, we find ourselves more and more at peace with life as it is, and more and more comfortable with being exactly as we are, including the moments of discomfort and confusion.

We (as the thinking mind, the character in the story) are not in control of this unfolding awakening process. We’re not doing it; it is doing (or undoing) us. The alchemy of evolutionary transformation is happening by itself, mostly unseen in the germinal dark below the level of conscious awareness at a cosmic or quantum scale incomprehensible to the human mind. We have no idea where it’s going, or how we or anyone else or the universe “should” be. Where “I” (the character) seem to be in this unfolding process only matters, or seems to matter, from the perspective of the imaginary separate person in the movie story. From the perspective of wholeness, non-separation or non-duality, it is obvious that however evolved or un-evolved this bodymind appears to be at any moment makes absolutely no difference, because this “bodymind” is really only an idea.

Nothing is ever really happening in the way it seems to be happening. Time and space are mental constructions, and evolution and awakening are stories. However much we seem to evolve, we never depart from right here, right now—and everything we experience is the past. We are Now, but we can’t experience or grasp this immediacy. What appears is all a kind of dream-like movie, and all of it, including thought and imagination and all the apparent mistakes and horrors, is a movement of life itself. It’s all included. It can’t be pulled apart.

“Joan Tollifson,” the apparent author of this text, doesn’t actually exist as a separate, independent, persisting thing apart from the rest of the universe. “Joan” is a character in a dream-like imagination, the movie of waking life. She shows up differently in different movies. This ever-changing form or pattern called Joan, which includes and depends upon the whole universe, and which can never actually be separated out from everything else, will someday disintegrate completely. This form is, in fact, disintegrating moment to moment. When any form or pattern disintegrates beyond recognition, life itself goes on, forming and unforming and reforming, patterning and un-patterning endlessly. And by life, I don’t just mean biological life—I mean the whole cosmos. Nothing ever really disappears because no-thing ever actually forms in the first place.

This text is emerging spontaneously—the words and ideas appear in the mind seemingly out of nowhere, the index finger pecks at the keyboard with astonishing speed, little black squiggles form on the computer screen and are instantly seen as words and translated into meaning, some are erased and revised or moved around—and all of this is happening by some mysterious force that cannot be divided from the wind that is blowing and the sun that is shining and the babies that are being born and the old people that are dying and the poop that is sliding out of Joan’s ostomy stoma at this very moment into the bag that is taped to her belly. It is one whole unfathomable and inseparable happening.

Although believing and identifying with our thoughts can create tremendous suffering and confusion, thought is not the enemy. And although the map is not the territory it describes, mapping is an activity of the territory, and words can be immensely evocative and transformative. Language, complex thinking and imagination are all undeniable and emergent aspects of what is. It all belongs. It’s all included.

What we see, think and imagine (the view from the rear window with the blind spot) is indeed a great movie! And sometimes a terrible one. Sometimes it’s a comedy, sometimes a tragedy, sometimes a thriller, sometimes boring, sometimes romantic, sometimes heart-wrenching. Blessedly, every night in deep sleep, the movie ends. What a relief! And then it turns on again. At the end of our life, my best guess is that the movie ends, just as it does every night, but it doesn’t come back on, and no one is left over to be upset that it isn’t coming back on. What a relief! But, of course, life itself doesn’t end. If it were left to wild nature, the body would be recycled into the soil and the worms and other animals, and in one way or another, consciousness will surely arise in new forms. The show will go on! This particular unique but ever-changing point of view and movie of waking life called Joan Tollifson will be extinguished, but the I that is no-thing and everything is unborn and undying. It is what Now is.

The thinking mind wants to grasp what that is, nail it down and “get it.” It wants control and security and certainty. That’s its job—it’s a survival function. In practical matters, it works very well. But in this realm, that approach leads only to confusion and suffering, or else to false certainty followed by doubt and/or dishonestly. Concepts may be useful in helping to reveal things, but the real transformation, the relief, freedom and peace that we long for, is in the listening presence, the direct seeing-experiencing-being, the openness and spaciousness of not knowing and not needing to know, the groundlessness of Now, and the simplicity of just this, as it is, concepts and all. This cup of coffee. This computer screen. This breathing, listening, heart beating, presence right here, right now. These very words. Just this.

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On More Thing: Here’s a lovely short article I recommend by my friend John Astin along with some information about two upcoming events he’s doing (an in-person retreat at his home and a book group on Zoom about Peter Brown’s The Yoga of Radiant Presence).

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Love to all….