Looking at knots from the emptiness and form sides
Knots are the whole complex of a belief in a story (as absolutely true), and the accompanying emotional and behavioral patterns. It brings identification into the content of awareness, and comes from and props up a sense of a separate self.
To see what is already more true for us, we can explore these knots from the emptiness side and the form side.
Exploring from the emptiness side
From the emptiness side, we find ourselves as awake emptiness, and see that all of it - the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors - are nothing other than this awake emptiness. We can explore and become more familiar with this through the headless experiments, the Big Mind process, or other forms of inquiry.
Exploring from the form side
From the form side, we can look at the effects of holding onto a particular story as absolutely true, what would happen if it was not attached to in this way, and finding the grains of truth in the reversals of the initial story. Through this, we discover that what we held as an absolute truth is really only a relative truth, which allows the grip on it to relax and identification go out of form and back into the field of awake emptiness (often just experienced as more spaciousness and a sense of peace.) The Work and different (other) forms of shadow work are good ways to explore the form side.
Differentiating the relative and the absolute
Another way to put it is that knots come from taking the relative (stories) as absolute (absolutely true), and the resolution is to differentiate the relative and absolute, seeing the stories as only relative truths, and finding ourselves as the absolute - as awake emptiness, and form as no other than awake emptiness itself.
The experience of the absolute changing over time
In real life, it doesn't always look exactly like this of course. The exploration of the form side of the knots may not change so much over time, although it may become more clear and differentiated over time. But the experience of ourselves as the awake emptiness and form may change over time. Initially, just as a sense of release, spaciousness, ease and peace. As we go along, more as a clear noticing of the awake void that all forms dances within, to and as - a field inherently absent of any separate self anywhere.
Labels: awake emptiness, emptiness, form, knots, relative and absolute