The Process Of Understanding

We'll focus on the union of two apparently contradictory gestures: simultaneous holding and releasing.

Holding.  I have a project, like writing a letter, or choreographing a musical, or solving a math problem, or holding (as we say) a meeting. Or leading a life.  Or concentrating on the breath, or on a meditative theme.  

Releasing.  Within this held space, this held environment or process, I must effect a kind of release, or nothing further happens.  

So I give myself the form of a sonnet or a haiku, and that invites the free creativity to fill out the form.  I hold the meditation theme, in the sense that I return to it from obvious distractions, but within the theme I allow any thought, any depth, to arise for me.  If I am a good leader, I can delegate rather than micromanage.

We seek to have strong concentration, and at the same time, within it, a maximum of letting go.  This has something of the structure of the invitation from the good host, who invites someone, welcomes them, and then allows the guest a great deal of freedom within their role as guest.  We welcome so many kinds of guests: babies into the world, and ideas that are new to us, and, as Thoreau put it, "an infinite expectation of the dawn."  [...]

The process of understanding anything requires a directedness on our part (that's the holding) and also a receptivity on our part (that's the releasing).  So, for instance, if we want to understand a cup, we aim our attention cup-wards, and within that intentionality is also a subtle waiting, or receptivity, for news about the cup to arrive.  I begin, perhaps picturing a cup, perhaps abstractly considering its functions, and something is given into my awareness -- for example, "You can put a cup down and it will still hold its contents, unlike a spoon that has to be held or it will spill."   Where did that particular thought come from?  Not historically, I mean, but right now: from where did the new understanding emerge into my awareness?   Somehow we aim and then somehow we receive. 

A concentrated yet effortless involvement of this kind can lead us into the very process of understanding, into that "where the thought came from" and therefore -- most surprisingly -- into increasingly intimate contact with the very life of the world.  We become less alienated from the earth, less "objective" and separate.  A self-development like this, a change in the process by which we use our minds and hearts to participate in the world, will be increasingly important as we face the disasters of human-wrought climate change and all its attendant troubles. Our hearts and minds can become collaborative aspects of the flow of relationship that is the earth. [...]

With how much of the totality can we let ourselves be aligned and allied to hold each other?  How freely, to what reaches of being, can we then release each other?  Let's find out.

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Michael Lipson is a teacher and author. Excerpt above from his book, Stairway to Surprise.