Consciousness exploration
Take a very simple event like the eating of an orange. Playfully imagine how that event is interpreted by the cells of your body. How is the orange perceived? It might be directly felt by the tip of your finger, but are the cells in your feet aware of it? Do the cells in your knee know you are eating an orange?
You exist outside of your present context, but such statements are meaningless, practically speaking, unless you give yourself some freedom to experience events outside of that rigid framework. These exercises alter your usual organizations, and hence allow you to encounter experience in a fresher fashion.
Seth Session
Seth: “Take a very simple event like the eating of an orange. Playfully imagine how that event is interpreted by the cells of your body. How is the orange perceived? It might be directly felt by the tip of your finger, but are the cells in your feet aware of it? Do the cells in your knee know you are eating an orange?
Take all the time you want to with this. Then explore your own conscious sense perceptions of the orange. Dwell on its taste, texture, odor, shape. Again, do this playfully, and take your time.
Then let your own associations flow in your mind. What does the orange remind you of? When did you first see or taste one? Have you ever seen oranges grow, or orange blossoms? What does the color remind you of?
Then pretend you are having a dream that begins with the image of an orange. Follow the dream in your mind. Next, pretend that you are waking from the dream to realize that another dream was simultaneously occurring, and ask yourself quickly what that dream was.
Followed in the same sequence given, the exercise will allow you to make loops with your own consciousness, so to speak, to catch it “coming and going.” And the last question — what else were you dreaming of? — should bring an entirely new sequence of images and thoughts into your mind that were indeed happening at the same time as your daydream about the orange.
The feel and practice of these exercises are their important points — the manipulation of a creative consciousness. You exist outside of your present context, but such statements are meaningless, practically speaking, unless you give yourself some freedom to experience events outside of that rigid framework. These exercises alter your usual organizations, and hence allow you to encounter experience in a fresher fashion.”
The Nature of the Psyche, Session 794
