I’m familiar with phenomenology because I used to study 19thc and Edwardian literature. I have to admit that I didn’t give it much thought as a graduate student in my 20’s, just another theory or idea to connect with a particular text, the result being a paper.
So I absolutely love your description of it here, particularly as it compares to mindfulness. I’ve been writing this week about the difference between mindfulness and contemplation. And so I can add phenomenology to that conversation.
Thank you, Renée. Such beautiful and illuminating writing. At essence, this helps me to hold more deeply this journey into phenomenology. I too, have always disdained “small talk”. Somehow this grief that has tenderized my heart feels warmed and comforted by the slow fire of your wonderful offering. After all, I remember Francis Weller (and perhaps you) saying that the heart is the organ of perception. Somehow I feel as if this is another way of returning home. Ah, my heart hears my words. I feel a warming, an ache, a quickness of breath and such tenderness.
I’m circling back to your experience of grief that has so “tenderized my heart” to finish a half-baked thought. Your steadfast devotion to being present to the grief—walking into it at every turn, rather than away—has been/is a crucible, it seems to me; and this crucible the bubbling fount of warmth, quickening breaths, ache, and tenderness . . . kissed with a bittersweet reverie.
Mark, thank you for sharing. Your words so poignantly emerge from presence to your lived experience. "Another way of returning home" . . . this is the essence of being so present to all of it--the warming, ache, quickness of breath, tenderness--in a moment. Is is not? The word that comes as I read yours is "reverie."
Yes, the heart . . . organ of perception, and I know that you are no stranger to this perceptual language.
My goodness, why is it that EVERYTHING you share resonates so deeply with me? I think you just identified what I’ve unknowingly been trying to be my entire life—a phenomenologist. From my youth toe-stubbing experiments with the intent to feel pain as pure sensation, to my young adult improv dance sessions where I’d try to embody feelings without needing to fulfill those feelings, to now my journey with unfixed, my entire life I’ve been seeking pure, naked, embodied experience without pre-conception. I’m thrilled to have a word for it and even more thrilled that your wise teachings are here to illuminate the path. Thank you dear soul friend.
Kimberly, every word I've read of yours and every interview--your utter presence to others--strikes me as wholly phenomenological. It is always wonderful to be in your company of shared experience.
And thank you for your kind words here. Part of the reason I drafted and redrafted this letter is that I kept scratching my head with "*this* is the direction this goes next?" I'm heartened that it seems to have landed. And YOU now have a word for "IT"!
Renée, I love this writing today and the deeper exploration, actually more an invitation into phenomenology. Agree with the distinction between mindfulness and phenomenology. The prior one of witnessing & observing. For me this can feel distant and removed. Mind focused and mind based, the word after all is rooted in the "mind". Yet mindfulness allows me to stop identifying with my thoughts and perceptions, which is a powerful gift! The latter distinction of phenomenology is what I tend to focus on the most. Receiving the moment, letting it in. Even in the pain, even in the joy, seeing the wonder in simply living life. It is pure intimacy. With myself, with life, with presence and with being! Every pore of my being a portal. A mandorla that both receives and offers.
As is so often so with what you share, I find myself nodding to your words. I am sitting still, waiting for words to come, and all that comes is more nodding from more of me. Thank you, dear friend.
Mindfulness is a doorway, and I am reminded of Tomberg's reflections (in Letter 1, I believe) on the path of being and the path of love. Are you familiar with these reflections?
Thanks Renée! And no to reading his reflections, but I would love to read it! I tried looking for it, in your writings? Read the one on silence. Beautiful, becoming the still calm waters...
Julie, in my copy of Tomberg, (trans. Robert Powell, Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1985), the passage is on pp. 35–36, beginning at the bottom of p. 35 with Thales and Heraclitus and on p. 36 the paragraph about ‘attitudes of soul’ in Letter II (not Letter I as I indicated last reply). He writes of the gift of tears, and I have a feeling this passage will touch a chord in you. . . .
A long, solo walk creates an in the moment experience where time stops existing, the body falls into a rhythm in motion and small needs that can be immensely satisfying when met. I sometimes find myself so completely engaged in a project or music or reading that when I eventually get distracted, I am surprised how much time passed without notice.
". . . where time stops existing" . . . "so completely engaged" . . . "I am surprised how much time passed without notice." Me, too, Switter. Would you say this is the first "thing" we notice and the most lingering when leaning into the fullness of experience?
I would say so. The body working at activities that either require very little thought or deep, creative concentration makes time disappear. It always surprises me. Also, I used to forget about time and space during long flights and completely enter the world of my mind where I created poems, paragraphs, and things I wanted to make with my hands somewhere and sometime.
Maybe long flights in economy class are as close as we can get to an Epictetus experience!
There are days when I must devote myself exclusively to being present to experience in order to re-ground myself in being. I don't usually last a whole day, but whatever I touch stays with me. Color has been a magnet for me. If I see, as now, the red light on the electric fan, I don't see anything else.
Susie, we've had only a few correspondences here, and yet, your beautiful reflection does not surprise me. Your presence to being ripples off this digital page. You touch on color as the magnet for you, and I look across the top of the computer at the deep green of a tall clump of grass, the sensation not limited to the eyes but carried across the whole of the body, and I can only imagine felt by the grass, too.
I imagine this is so when color magnetizes you, too, perhaps?
I’m familiar with phenomenology because I used to study 19thc and Edwardian literature. I have to admit that I didn’t give it much thought as a graduate student in my 20’s, just another theory or idea to connect with a particular text, the result being a paper.
So I absolutely love your description of it here, particularly as it compares to mindfulness. I’ve been writing this week about the difference between mindfulness and contemplation. And so I can add phenomenology to that conversation.
Thank you Renee!
Emily, isn’t it enchanting the circularity of things?
I very much look forward to your reflections on mindfulness and contemplation.
Yes, always surprising! And thank you:)
Thank you, Renée. Such beautiful and illuminating writing. At essence, this helps me to hold more deeply this journey into phenomenology. I too, have always disdained “small talk”. Somehow this grief that has tenderized my heart feels warmed and comforted by the slow fire of your wonderful offering. After all, I remember Francis Weller (and perhaps you) saying that the heart is the organ of perception. Somehow I feel as if this is another way of returning home. Ah, my heart hears my words. I feel a warming, an ache, a quickness of breath and such tenderness.
Mark,
I’m circling back to your experience of grief that has so “tenderized my heart” to finish a half-baked thought. Your steadfast devotion to being present to the grief—walking into it at every turn, rather than away—has been/is a crucible, it seems to me; and this crucible the bubbling fount of warmth, quickening breaths, ache, and tenderness . . . kissed with a bittersweet reverie.
Oh, my gosh — for that takes my breath away. Thank you, Renée.
Mark, thank you for sharing. Your words so poignantly emerge from presence to your lived experience. "Another way of returning home" . . . this is the essence of being so present to all of it--the warming, ache, quickness of breath, tenderness--in a moment. Is is not? The word that comes as I read yours is "reverie."
Yes, the heart . . . organ of perception, and I know that you are no stranger to this perceptual language.
My goodness, why is it that EVERYTHING you share resonates so deeply with me? I think you just identified what I’ve unknowingly been trying to be my entire life—a phenomenologist. From my youth toe-stubbing experiments with the intent to feel pain as pure sensation, to my young adult improv dance sessions where I’d try to embody feelings without needing to fulfill those feelings, to now my journey with unfixed, my entire life I’ve been seeking pure, naked, embodied experience without pre-conception. I’m thrilled to have a word for it and even more thrilled that your wise teachings are here to illuminate the path. Thank you dear soul friend.
Kimberly, every word I've read of yours and every interview--your utter presence to others--strikes me as wholly phenomenological. It is always wonderful to be in your company of shared experience.
And thank you for your kind words here. Part of the reason I drafted and redrafted this letter is that I kept scratching my head with "*this* is the direction this goes next?" I'm heartened that it seems to have landed. And YOU now have a word for "IT"!
Renée, I love this writing today and the deeper exploration, actually more an invitation into phenomenology. Agree with the distinction between mindfulness and phenomenology. The prior one of witnessing & observing. For me this can feel distant and removed. Mind focused and mind based, the word after all is rooted in the "mind". Yet mindfulness allows me to stop identifying with my thoughts and perceptions, which is a powerful gift! The latter distinction of phenomenology is what I tend to focus on the most. Receiving the moment, letting it in. Even in the pain, even in the joy, seeing the wonder in simply living life. It is pure intimacy. With myself, with life, with presence and with being! Every pore of my being a portal. A mandorla that both receives and offers.
Julie,
As is so often so with what you share, I find myself nodding to your words. I am sitting still, waiting for words to come, and all that comes is more nodding from more of me. Thank you, dear friend.
Mindfulness is a doorway, and I am reminded of Tomberg's reflections (in Letter 1, I believe) on the path of being and the path of love. Are you familiar with these reflections?
Thanks Renée! And no to reading his reflections, but I would love to read it! I tried looking for it, in your writings? Read the one on silence. Beautiful, becoming the still calm waters...
Julie, in my copy of Tomberg, (trans. Robert Powell, Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1985), the passage is on pp. 35–36, beginning at the bottom of p. 35 with Thales and Heraclitus and on p. 36 the paragraph about ‘attitudes of soul’ in Letter II (not Letter I as I indicated last reply). He writes of the gift of tears, and I have a feeling this passage will touch a chord in you. . . .
A long, solo walk creates an in the moment experience where time stops existing, the body falls into a rhythm in motion and small needs that can be immensely satisfying when met. I sometimes find myself so completely engaged in a project or music or reading that when I eventually get distracted, I am surprised how much time passed without notice.
". . . where time stops existing" . . . "so completely engaged" . . . "I am surprised how much time passed without notice." Me, too, Switter. Would you say this is the first "thing" we notice and the most lingering when leaning into the fullness of experience?
I would say so. The body working at activities that either require very little thought or deep, creative concentration makes time disappear. It always surprises me. Also, I used to forget about time and space during long flights and completely enter the world of my mind where I created poems, paragraphs, and things I wanted to make with my hands somewhere and sometime.
Maybe long flights in economy class are as close as we can get to an Epictetus experience!
Isn't it fascinating the depths of creative solitude we enter in the likes of long flights in economy class?! What paradox is human being.
There are days when I must devote myself exclusively to being present to experience in order to re-ground myself in being. I don't usually last a whole day, but whatever I touch stays with me. Color has been a magnet for me. If I see, as now, the red light on the electric fan, I don't see anything else.
Susie, we've had only a few correspondences here, and yet, your beautiful reflection does not surprise me. Your presence to being ripples off this digital page. You touch on color as the magnet for you, and I look across the top of the computer at the deep green of a tall clump of grass, the sensation not limited to the eyes but carried across the whole of the body, and I can only imagine felt by the grass, too.
I imagine this is so when color magnetizes you, too, perhaps?