Running and Returning - Stoicism and Unification

Ten Sefirot out of nothing. Stop your mouth from speaking, stop your heart from thinking, and if your heart runs (to think) return to a place of which it is said "they ran and returned"; and concerning this thing the covenant was made; and they are ten in extent beyond limit. Their end is infused with their beginning, and their beginning with their end like a flame attached to a glowing ember. Know, think [reflect, meditate] and imagine that the Creator is One and there is nothing apart from Him, and before One what do you count?

Ch.3 V.1 Sefer Yetzirah, Saadia Version


We all know what its like to be very busy.  ''Running around'' - getting in adventures!  Funny I've been running around for about three weeks since I last meditated on the immobility of my consciousness and the fact that it only exists in the spiritual dimension where there is no time or space and only perspective.

Seriously.  ''I've'' been ''running around'' and my consciousness has not moved one bit.  Sure the thought-stuff that makes up its contents has been continuously recoloured, updated and reorganised to reflect the various phenomena that I have experienced but it in itself hasn't moved one bit.

I move my head to look to my left.  My consciousness doesn't move.  My awareness is remapped to show what is to the left in my perceptual cell.  I move my head to the right.  Same again.

No size.  No movement. No differentiation.  All consciousness.

Go for a swim.  Get in the pool.  Track back and forth in the waters.  Experience the weird sensations that come with swimming.  The feel of the liquid, the change in weight, the splash of the water in your eyes, the movement of all your limbs and meditate on the fact that your consciousness is not moving at all.  Its not just your vision that is remapped, etc but all your senses.  Not just vision but all of that sensation in a sphere of absolute stillness.

And there's practical Kabbalah in this thinking as well.  Being inside this goldfish bowl of consciousness where thought-stuff flows like a fluid, I know that as the fish my fins can influence currents.  I know that breathing out the letters make ''bubbles'' of those letters form*.

Where is this consciousness happening?  Its happening ''inside'' my larger consciousness which is also not moving.  Where am I running to?  Or what am I running away from?  Where can I return to if I've never ever left?

One could read this to suggest that it's experiences of consciousness that one runs to and then ''returns'' to ''normality'' in case it becomes all too much.  Once that sense of normality is altered from its original fallen state by the Great Work and one regularly experiences the rectified state of consciousness then one must expect ''running and returning'' to swap in their meaning, mustn't one?  One runs around in the delusion of material existence and one returns to the source of consciousness?

*Letters produce Kingships when impressed upon ''reality''.