Oh, right. I get it now. Infinite in the sense of boundlessness. Somehow I had it wired with a material totality or something. But it now occurs to me that there is another, more integrated, simpler meaning for this notion.
I was having problems conceptualizing what Infinite Being could be until I thought about the idea of boundlessness. Jill Bolte Taylor here talks about an experience where she felt boundless joyous consciousness being forced into this little physical form that is her body. I was meditating out on the pier yesterday in a bit of a blow and somehow connected that thought to the notion of Infinite Being in the endless variations in the sounds and forces of the waves’ and wind’s surging.
Also, this connects for me to the idea of a “spiritual being in a physical body” (p. 13) and Mr. Chopra’s description of Pure Consciousness (p. 9).
With regards to Mr. Scheinfeld’s notion of limitation and restriction. In my experience yesterday, the “limited and restricted body” became the instrument of access to the boundlessness of what was going on around me. Previously, I had great awareness of the limitation of the instrument (here / here). This sense of limitation is clearly connected to the style of consciousness that is doing the listening or perceiving. There is a version that “hears” boundaries, and there is another that senses endless depths, nuances, contours, rhythms, patterns, recursions, crescendos, etc. There is one that is inside looking out, closing and limited, there is another that is “in suspension”, part of the usual notion of “out there”, keenly aware of the similarity and continuity of the sensations of the body, the perceiving consciousness and the sensing of everything else. In that mode, it is as it were in some degree one sensing. And, that one sensing is both “infinite” and personal. Hence, I suppose this to be the foundation of the notion of my sole control in my hologram, where everything that happens there is my construction, where there is no power out there in anyone or anything. Like here, in this consciousness, there is boundlessness in perception. Beyond creating the expansive perceptual framework, e.g., the Expanded Consciousness, it’s not clear yet how one would invoke choice as in “the power to create anything I want”. The clue Mr. Scheinfeld offers is pursuing joyousness and Processing discomfort and as some point of development popping things in because they would be fun to play with. This sounds purely magical, (as in “Bullshit”), but I’m willing to assume based on recent experiences that there is a miraculous, “non-magical” version of this yet to be experienced on my part. At one point Mr. Scheinfeld asks the reader to contemplate “What would it feel like if I had infinite power, wisdom, and abundance?” (p. 104). This seems to be a step in that direction. Maybe a step towards Mr. Herrigel’s “archer aiming at himself” (p. 6)
Needless to say, this was the first mediation I can recall, where I didn’t have a desire to move on; where I felt I could have remained indefinitely. I recall numerous stories of Eastern mediators sitting for greatly extended periods of time. Now I feel I grasp why this would be so and how it could be done.
