Report 68

Very interesting questions put forth, Thank You Calvino!

Knowing Capacities...

I know it must seem strange that I quote someone 28 years younger than myself all the time, but it just so happens that my son has a long attention span for certain kinds of talks. So this morning on the way to school he was telling me about 'powers'. He says, quite authoritatively, that it is never that anyone gets any new powers. He says the same ones are always there, but people learn about them.

He is always designing video game plot lines in his head, so this is part of where this comes from. BUT he also gets that whatever we are talking about, ie video games, we are also in metaphors. ^.^

"Attention span for these kinds of talks" is a capacity in itself., for instance.

So I re-heard the other day, someone saying that the *most* important thing for any child during their formative years, is not 'information' but rather responsiveness to their impressions...feedback. In this way they learn to trust the entire world as a place to explore, give in to, and receive back from, openly and responsively.

That sense of friendliness/trust with the world takes the center of attention and pressure off of 'themselves' in a way... expands their capacities to take risks, too, to try things out. They never know anything different than a 'wide field'. Obstacles don't quite register as something persistent.  

Pema wrote an analogy of sawing off the branch one is sitting on to describe not 'believing' in anything including the cynicism of directed non-belief... ie not 'trusting' intellectualism so that it can be more stretchy... this seems to be a kind of trust in unknowing/ resting in sky, which makes it possible to play with all kinds of structures. It has been a pervasive image this week.

"Holding in a new way."