Out of Nothing
writing samples
A Word About Nothing
Look at the center of your mind.
Look at what you are looking with.
This is where we live.
Look at what you are looking with, then, again
Look at what you are looking with, then, again
Look at what you are looking with:
THIS is focusing on focusing and this where the Nothing that
Cannot be called a Nothing is experienced.
Out Of Nothing is based on the primary experience of looking at the center of the mind/self
and discovering that what might have seemed to be a center is no center at all. Discovering
there is no center to the mind/self that can be grasped in a tangible way, leaves us searching
for ways to deal with what is t/here. Instead of a stable core of any kind, the center of the
mind/self is a process and, as one looks on, attempting to define, to see, to describe, one sees
there is never a single point that is “right here right now”: nothing can be said that means
anything about the “center” of our mind/self. Always what one looks at and sees as the
mind/self has become an instant that now lies in the past and then one can see what or who
one is only “by looking back” at the memory that was just created a seamless nanosecond
ago.
The two processes we experience: One, the world in all its physicalness is t/here;
two, the center of the mind/self is elusive and cannot be located in a specific way. As we
attempt to look at the center, in THAT very attempt, we experience
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that our “center” is a centerless center and is in the process of occurring and, yet, can only be pointed at, even as there is nothing tangible to point at: the thing pointed at is the thing pointing, a Möbius strip movement. We discover we are not pointing at something we can, in any way, describe with an adjective, as there are no “characteristics” there to label. The only thing that can be pointed at, in that instant, is the instant that is lodged in our memory and is an instant in the past and not the center itself. So, always, what we look at as the self is in the past: it is always a past self even if it is only a nanosecond of an instantaneous instant old. We know we are here by way of Nothing, a Nothing that cannot even be called a Nothing. This is our awe-inspiring wonder: the thing/____ pointed at is the thing/____ pointing…the world and ourselves constantly falling over this waterfall of being.
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Spaciousness is everywhere and is nothing.
Seeking the center of our awareness, we bounce from what we point at as the self to
spaciousness, never landing anywhere.
In an attempt to grasp the center of our awareness, a spaciousness (or what can be called
an opaque translucency or an opening opening, clear and dark at the same time), is as close
as we can get because we never have the sense we fully grasp the center of our awareness in
a tangible way.
We cannot locate the center of our awareness in the same way we locate our body and,
even as we know we are here, there is no specific content to the experience of “Knowing we
are here.”
No Inside Or Outside To Spaciousness
Spaciousness within the mind is experienced as “nothing but” spaciousness, any attempt to
describe spaciousness “ending in an experience of spaciousness.”
Spaciousness is perceived inside the mind, yet we perceive it as being outside the mind.
We can perceive no inside or outside to spaciousness.
If we direct our attention towards the outermost perimeter of what we can be aware of
within our mind, we experience spaciousness of which nothing can be said. Spaciousness is
merely/sheerly spaciousness, an unnamable experience we can point at in symbol with a
blank space “____.”
Upon becoming aware of “____,” figuratively described as “spaciousness or opaque
translucency or opening opening” at the center of our awareness, no more thought arises and
we are left with nothing but an experience of Abutment pointing at spaciousness/____, a
spaciousness/____ we experience as a pointless point.