Tuning into perfect vision

Jim Tarran

-Tuning into perfect vision -

A few of us remember the old style tv sets, that were tuned via a dial to one of the few tv stations that were available at the time. More people still, might recall pre-digital radios or ‘tuners’. To find a station, the tuning dial is taken in broad sweeps across the frequency range. During these sweeps one intermittently, ‘accidentally’, hits the frequency that the desired station is on - and there it is - the show you wanted, momentarily bursting out of the static!

The proceeding process is one of honing in. As we hit the right frequency, with more regularity, we narrow the range of the sweep. Our movements become smaller, attention more subtly attuned. Eventually you are there, tuned-in. With a final few micro-adjustments the radio-show is crisp and clear with no interference!

In “yoga body-work” (yogāsana), or; dance, conversation,  hugging, childbirth, expressive art, cooking or any other relational experience, allowing the melting/dissolving/merging, of all the facets of the moment into their interrelated whole, is required to “know”, and therefore correctly respond to, that moment.

  Absorbed in the inter-related whole there is no static, there is no interference, nothing “pulls attention”. It is the “One-unified-signal” of the moment. It is the unifying sound of inter-relationships. On the flip-side of this unified signal? A scattered, confusing, cross-confluence of infinite, discreet, separate and unrelated things - a maelstrom of “white-noise”. No wonder so many of us feel lost at times.

In yogāsana investigative movements of the body, are the “play” (līlā) of the dial. The purpose (artha) of the play is to tune into the interdependent “frequency” of this moment - we could call it ‘Radio Yoga!’ A crisp, clear, clean signal, is total absorption (samadhi).We know (jñāna) that we are more and more clearly “tuned-in” because “interference”, in the form of uncertainty (saṃśaya) disappears. There is nothing on the “outside” to create interference, to cause doubt. Everything is part of the “One-signal”! What we are absorbed in is whole!

In the place of interference? Replacing doubt confident-intuition - beyond doubt, “beyond the mind” (unmanī). This intuitive awareness is a “sign” (lakṣaṇa), along with freer, deeper more relaxed breathing and a sense of ease-fulness, that one is truly absorbed. We can think of this living moment, this whole, as “The Goddess” (devi), “The Mother” or as “The Source” (yoni). “Goddess” because self-surrender to it is liberating and therefore worthy, of gratitude and veneration. “Mother” because in that surrender we are protected from the suffering that clinging causes us - as there is nothing that can be seen distinctly to cling to . “Source” because all particles are expressions of the Field that underpins them.

Being attuned or “surrendered” (śaraṇāgati) to the “frequency” of the the living moment, one’s thoughts, speech and physical-motions respond in the same way that one might to the content we hear on the radio station. The radio animates us with music, discussion or drama. Similarly, we can be be animated by the ebb and flow of the waves of life emanating from the dance of the Living Moment.

When there are no other signals to distort the information, there is no confusion. The yogin is thereafter of service (seva) to the Now - given to It . Every pore fully responsive to It.

Quotes

‘All things are naturally like space. Space itself has no characteristics. It neither exists by nature, nor is it non existent. It transcends dualistic thought.’

— Milarepa