[Elspeth Crawford]

Thanks Don, Isn’t this one of many ways of “practice” ? I will look for answers from others too. My only problem is with the possibility that without an other to stay with oneself, various practices can create more individualism and then its even worse result, entitlement. How do you counter separateness? I realise as I write that I am sounding unbelieving and critical when in fact I want to enhance and encourage what you aim for – being in the whole meaning of that word. McG uses a word “presencing” in various places – he ascribes it to RH which to me is less important than what is being described as happening. eg TMWT

p. 1112 … internalism is a mistake, and that consciousness is located not inside us, but in a non-spatial ‘betweeness’ created by our attention and the object of our attention. It is, therefore, always a partial revelation – and partly, also, a creation of the act of experiencing – but our part in it does not negate its reality: that is reality. Reality is always coming into being. A true presencing of something, not just a re-presentation.

[my italics]

I like, in ordinary world,, things like “active listening” or “having an observer self”, both of which are starters to push on the door where a mind might start shifting its mode of attention, and enable “presencing”.

All of this goes with a philosophy of NOT being individual – more a fairly stable pattern in the energy flows we are all in taking parts of them in me and me may enter into them. [a whole other reply would mention indigenous belief that the mountains trees animal insect etc are similarly in the flowing]

Elspeth