Philosophy, contemplative practice, and the physics of nature's flow — for finding your own way. For those who don't need the added pressure of another's way, but are curious about ways of understanding, perceiving, and living that mesh with each other — and that only you can make your own.
Each episode is a complete live recording — typically around two hours — opening with a 15-30 minute inquiry into the session's theme, moving into an hour-long guided practice, and closing with comments and discussion. These explorations grew from years of my own searching — trying to fit into practices that promised relief, never quite finding home in any tradition, and stumbling upon a rational basis for getting traction on ways I don't have to try.
As your fellow explorer, I'm Mackenzie Hawkins — researcher in philosophy of physics, contemplative practitioner, and co-author of several books with physicist and Tai Chi Master Dr. Wonchull Park. Drawing from his nowflow philosophy, these series-based explorations use philosophy and physics as ways of understanding and perceiving what's here already.
Not ways to follow, but ways that might help you find your own — for anyone looking to explore beyond the pressures we put on ourselves.
What if "Science Says" We're Mostly Space? Beyond Just Stuff Series
•Mackenzie Hawkins•Episode 28
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Our perception is a map -- it's always a map -- and it can be informed by our understanding, it can be tinted by our expectations. Some of what this exploration is about is to see what it's like to actually feel what we feel, rather than what we think we feel. And thrown into this whole mix is the way that physics -- especially sometimes quantum physics, quantum mechanics -- is used in spirituality to kind of shake up our expectations, as quantum physics really can get to us that way.
The exploration for this session touches a little bit on the quantum picture -- probably more just high school chemistry level, because that can take us pretty far. The underlying question is: well, what really is shifting? Telling myself a different story about what makes up my body -- does that enable me to feel more, or feel something? And can we come to know it from the inside out, experientially? Maybe not just swallow wholesale that because we have a different scientifically validated map laid over our sense of our body, that it's that we're feeling.
We go back to Rutherford's gold foil experiment -- shooting beams of particles at a very, very, very thin gold sheet, with detectors all the way around, even behind the source. It's like directing a bullet at tissue paper and having the bullet bounce right back. And yet that's what happened, sometimes, very rarely. Most of the time it just went straight through. And that's how we have that sense of: an atom is 99.999% empty space -- I'll put that in scare quotes for now. The nucleus of an atom is like a marble, and the atom is the size of a stadium. And we'll go into our meditation practice and see what it's like to feel our same old same old body in contact with the same old same old surface -- ground, chair, cushion -- with this mapping, this story, that what we think of as just stuff is in a way mostly empty space...
Beyond Just Stuff Series: Maps, Mystery & Nature's Flow What is it about quantum that lets us feel like physics gives us permission to view stuff as not just plain old mechanical stuff? One of the limitations that comes up in a body-centered practice is that we can have associations with the body as, you know, "it's just the body" -- and that blocks our fuller feeling of the magic of being a human being. As physicist and tai chi master Wonchull Park says, the map is not the terrain -- but we can use our maps to open more to the terrain as it actually is.
We move from the playfully imaginative through to some genuinely strange territory in physics, and arrive somewhere more ordinary and more immediate. But there's a question underneath it all that's worth sitting with: what is it that's actually shifting when we try on a new story about what we're made of? Is it the physics picture? Or is it a letting go of what we usually tell ourselves? Or some of both? These six sessions explore that question from the inside out -- using maps, yes, and also learning to see through them, fall through them, and arrive at something that doesn't need a story to justify it. The mystery, it turns out, was never in danger. It's always untouched.
In these six explorations, each with an hour-long guided body-centered practice at its heart, we'll see what it might be like to peel back some of that "oh, I know my physical body, it's just stuff" -- to open to a richness that's already there, beneath what we think we know. No stamp of approval needed from any authority. Permission inherently granted.
As we get settled in, welcome back to Opening Beyond Just Stuff. And this will be a continuation of in some ways the stories that we tell ourselves. And so as we explored last time, our perception is a map. It's always it's always a map. And it can be informed by our understanding. It can be tinted by our expectations. As we experience when we play that game of being beamed in to this human form for just a few minutes, like the thought experiment that the famous physicist Richard Feynman would sometimes do. Or even the difference between feeling our experience through the labels of thumb and hand and foot and right eyeball or whatever it might be, versus the experience of sometimes it's called drawing on the right side of your brain. It could be seen as interpreted. We won't get into the neuroscience, but could be interpreted more as you know, meditating on the right side of the brain, where it's less through our conceptual filter and a little bit more open to what actually is that raw sensory input that gives us our experience. If we were an artist, it would this would help us to actually draw what we see rather than what we think we see. And some of what this exploration is about is to see what it's like to actually feel what we feel rather than what we think we feel. And thrown into this whole mix is the way that science, especially physics, especially sometimes used the quantum physics, quantum mechanics, and spirituality to kind of shake up shake up our expectations as uh as uh quantum physics can really get to us that way. And the exploration for today will touch a little bit on that quantum picture, probably more just high school chemistry level, because that can uh take us pretty far. But as we embark on this, the kind of underlying question is well, what really is shifting if telling myself a different story about what makes up my body enables me to feel more or feel something differently. What is what is that shift, and can we come to know it from the inside out experientially, and maybe not just swallow wholesale that because we have a different scientifically validated map laid over our sense of our body that it's that we're feeling, and so to get us started, maybe just a little bit of history of atoms and particles goes all the way back to Democritus. This idea that maybe everything that uh is not just these objects that we see, but are actually comprised of little tiny smaller particles. And around the time of Newton, this was kind of called like corpuscles, and you have like this kind of you know, billiard ball kind of idea of just like these just total stuff that is bouncing off of each other that left gravity to be quite a mystery, spooky action at a distance, even though it was described by Newton, but as a story for another day. But who felt like, my goodness, you know, when Newton came on the scene, and after his work, there just wasn't a whole lot left for physics. He was able to describe so much, and there was a in very broad strokes, maybe a sense of robbing nature of some of its mystery, since in a very short period of time, so much could become predictable and understood through a few simple laws of nature, and of course, we know that that wasn't the end of the story. We'll pick up again with uh I can still remember the picture. I don't know if you have these flashbacks, but I can still remember the picture in my high school chemistry textbook. And you know, it's the orbits, right? It's it's the orbits, and even like there's like a little nucleus, and then there's the orbits around the the nucleus of the atom of the electrons whizzing around, these electrons whizzing around, but even before that, and they had like a little blurb of history, how I got into that. There was this idea that maybe these atoms were kind of like a they call it the plum pudding model, or maybe there was just like these pluses and minuses. Like in the book, it's like little pluses, little minus. You just kind of wonder if if the the image of the world is actually these little pluses and minuses when you're uh ninth grader studying this. But there was an interesting experiment, and we'll use this as a way to play with our own perception of our body. There was an interesting experiment done by Rutherford, where he took a very thin, very, very, very thin gold sheet. So tried to get it as thin as possible and shot beams of particles at it and had detectors all around. And kind of the brilliance of the experiment was they so much anticipated basically it to go straight through. Maybe deflect a little bit. But if you're, you know, shooting basically bullets through tissue paper, which was the analogy that Rutherford used, you would expect it to basically go straight through. But part of the brilliance of that experiment was that they put the detectors all the way around and even behind the source of those particles, even though, like, I mean, there's no way you're gonna shoot a bullet into tissue paper and it's gonna bounce back. But that's what happened sometimes, very rarely, most of the time it just went straight through, and that's how we have that sense of you know, an atom is ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent empty space. Empty space, I'll put that in scare quotes for now. Um ninety-nine point nine nine empty space, but every once in a while there would be a particle that would bounce directly back, which is odd. Yeah, it's like directing a bullet at tissue paper and having the bullet bounce right back, but that's what gave that sense of that within this larger atom that there was a very, very, very, very small core. I remember the analogy is like it's like a marble, it's a marble, and the atom is the size of the stadium, so really big.
SPEAKER_01
And why talk about any of this? Well, that's part of the open inquiry here, but we'll go into our meditation practice inquiry and see what it's like to feel our same old, same old body in contact with the same old, same old surface, ground, chair, cushion with this mapping this story in a way that what we think of as just stuff, maybe our physical body is in a way mostly empty space.
SPEAKER_02
And maybe some wave functions and maybe some virtual particles mediating an interaction we might encounter on this adventure or not.
SPEAKER_01
It'll just be part of this exploration of what are we breaking through? What are we allowing for? What is our experience? And how can that change shift depending on our assumptions and expectations? So can settle in for this adventure and close your eyes. And just can notice notice what's happening on the inside. May have some reaction to some of what I'm saying. Some of us are very uh strictly like a physicalism or treat science in a certain way as having a certain authority of truth. And some of us might have had experiences that really tie us to feeling a certain way about what quantum means for you personally. And while I don't profess to have a neutral view, I feel like above all it's it's nice just to bring it home in a personal inquiry for each of us taking some fuller, deeper breaths, and as we so often do in this first thirty minutes of the foundations practice, letting the outbreath carry with it a sense of letting go and laying down into support. Take a few outbreaths and just feel your shoulders laying down under your torso. Wherever they're resting. Letting that sense of contact between hand and lap feel fuller, riper. I could even release some extra tension and holding in your hands, maybe even your arms.
SPEAKER_02
Right now it's more the back of my hands that are resting on my knees. But for you, whatever is making contact.
SPEAKER_01
We have such a sense of our hands making contact touch the sense of one thing touching another, a solidity, the tangibility of that. And continue to use the outbreath to let go and lay down more fully the weight of your body into the immediacy of that support. The way your seat slightly spreads. And the substantiality of it all sitting like a mountain. Right at your seat. Right at the very lowest part of your body in contact with the ground. And the felt sense of mutual contact. Force going from your body into the ground. Being perfectly matched by the support of the ground into your body. Action reaction. Let's insert that layer of a map, that picture from physics of atoms being almost entirely empty space. So we encounter this feeling of real contact touch. Yeah, we're levitating. And yet.
SPEAKER_02
In a way. Couldn't be saying that a lot. In a way. Opening to the unknown for ourselves. Opening beyond our preconceptions. Science, in a way, is telling us. That's more the picture of reality. What's going on? We could go further where those electron clouds that are repelling each other in the seat and in the ground. Probabilistic wave functions, whatever that means. Even that force of repulsion is mediated by virtual photons, whatever that means. Feeling what we feel. We do have commonplace expectation of the air being free-flowing and very to its grain size. Already blown way past with this.
SPEAKER_01
And so yeah, let's feel the contact inside our nose. We often do as part of our foundations. As both being mostly empty space. Do we even find a shift if we contemplate that that empty space is somehow full and yet not full of probability clouds of where electrons may be or even the quantum field that could be said to be mediated that interaction creating that repulsion sometimes that's given as a picture of being mediated by virtual photons, and all of that can sound very cool, at least to some of us, and some of us may as well feel shifts in our experience as we contemplate this, as we feel the breath at our nose. Sometimes we've talked about here with the free flow quality of nature, how it's fractal, like ever finer flows within flows practically infinite. Maybe some of this picture from physics opens us up to more finely feeling something so simple as the breath right at our nose. Or is it a letting go of what we usually tell ourselves? Or is it some of both. And as you breathe out, mostly empty space.
SPEAKER_02
Air air filling your lungs, and even filling all through your body, all through your torso.
SPEAKER_01
And then on the alpha, it's just mostly very much mostly empty space. Above the sides, front and back, and feeling the space inside your entire body, and feeling like the space around your body permeates through the space inside your body, in between all those atoms made of ninety-nine point nine nine percent space. Your thumb. So that was a poor way of introducing it. Let's just fall back into our memories of what we did last. Maybe we get to experience it. New York, gently, slowly bringing your pointer finger and your thumb tips closer and closer. The space between them will be coming smaller and smaller until they seemingly or actually touching letting yourself feel into the immediacy and the mystery of just that.
SPEAKER_02
Once again, the space all around our physical body all through it. And what is inside and what is outside? What is body and what is perception? And what is this experience of ourselves? Since these are questions without really needing an answer, just the opening to the asking of them. Give them a big shake. And for a final minutes, just even come down to lying down. Signal the whole body, whole system. Oh, we just felt the breath and a letting go. If you've come down to to lying, just letting the outbreath give that sense of letting go and laying down. The kind of end of the story.
SPEAKER_01
Because we kind of stop at that sense of that's just what's there. That's all there is to it. And it's feeling into your own experience of having a body. Being embodied. After an exploration like this. All the way to the tips of your fingers. All the way to entire back body in contact. And maybe with a little fun and awe also levitating. Perception, sense of who we are opening to the unknown. Perhaps with some encouragement, permission, whatever you feel a science picture enabled for you. Not a concept, not a word, not something that is an experiment that happened many, many decades ago in some lab. What a immediacy of experience right now. Give a little space and time.
SPEAKER_02
Hope to see you back for another, and we'll have some time here for what this experience, what this inquiry was like for the person for whom it matters, which is for each of us. So many emojis and Swiss R. Good to see you back to hello from Arizona. US and sending love and blessings. Are welcome. Thanks for joining. Neil, good evening from the UK. Good evening to you. A little bit later there for you than Arizona. Charlie. I think you might have been the one who came to Tai Chi as well and did choo choo choo. That's quite a few loves. You you must have put in uh put in uh quite a few copy and pastes, I hope. Not having to write those out each time.
SPEAKER_01
And tell me more what what connected for you tell us more. Matt, hey.
SPEAKER_02
Thank you, Ka. Thank you, Ka. Your icon looks familiar, but I can't say oh I think maybe you're new. Maybe you're new. Let me know. Let me know. Always welcome. David says, I feel like I've been floating around for the last hour or so. Interesting, right? Has your mostly empty space been floating around in mostly empty space? And why do we not tend to feel that usually? So good to see you back. Well, David, most definitely. All right, so we have we have clarity. We definitely have clarity. Um yeah, I have uh a story I love from uh Richard Feynman when he was giving his uh some of his famous Feynman lectures, and um he said uh it was like on day three of the conference or so on quantum mechanics, and he said, you know, for those of you who are joining, because he looked down the audience and there was like a lot of more new people, and he said those of you who are just joining, um, you're not gonna understand this, but the people who have been joining for the last few days are not gonna understand this either. So that's kind of uh the feel uh um don't don't need to try and understand this because even the physicists who uh dedicate their lives to trying to understand quantum, consider it a mystery in many ways. Raven, some of your reflections brought a new meaning to the phrase, I'm feeling empty inside. Yes, usually we can um well feel free, Raven, to to share more on that. But sometimes we can feel empty like a deficient empty. I think that's a oh, I feel so empty inside, hollowed out, and some of some of what can be interesting to play with is when we feel ourselves to be more empty, and here we're just literally meaning, you know, empty space. So I do want to keep putting that in quotation marks because I don't I don't, you know, it is it is it is full of of something. We just it's not a usual perception of just stuff. But when we feel more empty, I don't know if any of you've kind of felt a little bit more of that fullness of unembodied feeling, it's like huh, and just that open question of how you know what what is the dynamic here of is it a is it is it that we we've reached a uh you know a map that like okay that's that's the better map, or is it a letting go of an assumption? I don't know, I'll leave it. I don't know. I have my thoughts as you can probably tell, but I don't know. Firefly, love the name. Caught the end of this, love the space physics exploration. Hope to catch the whole session next time. That'd be great.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
I do record these and eventually they come out somehow freely.
SPEAKER_01
I'm way, way, way backlogged. Kev says newer, attended a few of your groups.
SPEAKER_02
I so enjoy you and your practices.
SPEAKER_01
Oh, thank you. That's wonderful that you're back.
SPEAKER_02
I felt like your um icon was somewhat familiar, but my goodness, I I don't claim to remember everything. Love the Richard Feynman lectures. Another fan of Richard Feynman. Literally as well as metaphorically, yeah. I think that was relating to the feeling empty inside. Whatever literally in this context, yeah. I was like, how many times am I gonna say in a way during this session? It's always, you know, when maybe if there's anything, it begins to help us hold our labels just a little more lightly, empty space stuff, and not that we have to know what it is exactly.
SPEAKER_01
But that pointing in a more opening direction towards the fullness of experience And help us encounter something that if we're like oh maybe this will be more the theme for next time is Al O Tso says the Tao that can be named is not the true Tao Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.
SPEAKER_02
So if we have these maps that are of the terrain and we take one of the maps as that's it. That is it and maybe if we do that in any level there's a kind of limitation because as Master Park says, who is my Tai Chi teacher and my collaborator for the last ten plus years?
SPEAKER_01
The map is not the terrain.
SPEAKER_02
Tao that can be named is not the true Tao. So whatever it is, even if we're down to you know particle physics and I'm really not so sure how much we understand or know what that theory is telling us.
SPEAKER_01
It's it's not the terrain itself, it's always a map, a story of what it David writes, I have a touch of pneumonia.
SPEAKER_02
Oh my on top of everything this week and it was great to feel so empty for a while and so much lighter now.
SPEAKER_01
I'm mostly not here. Yeah. So I do have a dissolving pain series that I know David, you've experienced too, and even a lot of what we were doing of feeling the space around our fingers and space occupied by our fingers and permeating through our fingers that also comes from dissolving pain in open focus by Dr.
SPEAKER_02
Les Femi. And so there's few things that take our body and make it feel more like you know, just like chunky stuff than an injury or an illness.
SPEAKER_01
Pain. That's why we tend to brace around pain.
SPEAKER_02
And my goodness, it's probably this will more reveal my age, um I was probably I was probably 18 and in like the year 2000. Um, you know, Deepak Chopra's quantum healing. I okay more from the the scientist kind of skeptical view. But you feel something. You feel something. And I think that some of what we're exploring here is how we don't necessarily have to take sides, but that we can find what helps us in our own experience to more fully feel just what is there. And that can include we are sick with pneumonia and we feel we can breathe a little easier. We feel a little lighter. And for me that not that we're after the benefits, because that can also mislead us if we're oh this helps me, so then I'm gonna go with that. And this is where the way that Master Park, Master Wandshill Park, really lets us kind of open to the unknown through more of the established physics rather than quantum. Includes quantum, but doesn't rely on a particular picture interpretation, can help us can might, we'll see, can help us access that sense of opening and possibility that feels like uh more just laying down the burden, um instead of an adding, like wait a second, now I've got I've got to feel you know you know this electrostatic repulsion between my atoms, and it's actually a quantum probabilistic wave function, and it's what field theory and there's mediated by what you know, force carriers, you know, like like that's like how can I carry that around? It can like blow my blow open my mind for a session or two, but I I can't really carry that around. At least I can't. Um and uh so it's like how do we make this livable? How do we make this real? Carol, I see a couple of your questions. I'm gonna pop back up and see what I missed up above while I was going off. Um so it was David and pneumonia. I do hope you feel better. Firefly says conceptualizing space really helps me get out of my head, ironically. Yeah. Have you read any penrose? Perhaps consciousness, another aspect that uh that would be fun to explore. Yes. No, I have not read any penrose. Can tell me why I should read more penrose. I'd be very open to any suggestions you have. And uh, yeah, I think that that will be I mean, why not? If we're gonna be playing with uh quantum, let's uh let's get into some observer and observed and consciousness. Yeah, let's just have a ball. Let's just have a ball. Might as well. David, you're cap- you you got my phrase in a way, is in a way. So that's gonna be like my like a like. It's like, it's like, in a way, in a way, the most appropriate term to use, I think, as everything is kind of like that in reality, in a way. Oh, I so enjoy that remaining sort of. I love that you're uh riffing off of each other, even. Carol, um, what can I read up? Yeah, so um can Google uh I'll just type his name. Launchel Park uh needs two L's. And uh several books um for this for this series, probably now flow, breath, movement, and mind would be um would be quite helpful. Um yeah, and that's where you can read up on his work and co-author that book. I am not a physicist. Um, Master Park is a physicist, and um yeah, this was fun. This was fun all. So I'll say till next time. Carol says it's very hypnotic. Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking about hypnotism. Carol, can you say a little bit more about what is hypnotic about it? What does what does that experience mean for you? Does it make you kind of like calming? Disassociative work. Okay. Why interesting, okay? Yeah, you know, um that's why I even wanted to follow up. And that can I think be some of the the uh it's the kind of language Eric Sonian hypnosis uses. Okay. You guys are really educating me. Well I love coming on Insight Timer. Tap into the wisdom here. You do that. All right. If you if you'd like to share more of your experience, then um it's always interesting to hear um the feeling the space between, like the space between your eyes and these kinds of things. My understanding from reading Dr. Femi is that that is part of um uh hypnosis to some degree. I think for me personally, my experience is that um, and this might be but Carol, you've come to several of my um uh sessions, so you see that this it's not always like quantum weirdness. Um let's see, Carol says, I'll get the books, yes, the hands faces between it's very disassociative. Yeah. Which loosens up the mind. Yes, I love them. So um yeah, I think the phrase disassociative is interesting because it's um can can imply a sense of removing oneself from one's experience. And one possibility could be just that kind of depends on how you kind of arrange your maps. So one possibility could be that we kind of have a cartoon version, yeah, Carol, not in a bad way, but a good way, okay. Yeah, yeah. And I and you know, and and there can be times when disassociation can be good. Um, sometimes it's a very important thing. Um, but it's like just interesting language, right? So even like take David's experience where he had the this you know pain of pneumonia coming down with pneumonia, and we can have like a very almost uh like kind of coarse-grained cartoon sense of oh, my body and it hurts this way, and I am this way, and yada yada yada. I and some of this feeling of spaciousness, and what I would say even more generally, the sense of nature's flow underneath, so kind of peeling back some of the cartoon-like maps of our labels and our concepts, and we still have perception, we still have concepts, but we kind of get to these layers where they're less oriented in the familiar way, and like I love that phrase, like it loosens up the mind, right? So you're you can feel like you're free-floating, you can feel so much lighter, you can feel very different than you usually do. And one kind of metaphor image for that is instead of like, oh, I'm kind of floating above my experience or rising above my experience, is actually I'm peeling away extra heavy concepts and maps and assumptions that are not really needed, and I'm actually getting closer to the directness of my experience. So that's just a for whatever it's worth, um, that kind of way we even talk about and frame our own experience. And it's certainly hard to talk about these kinds of experiences, especially through comments in chat. I I I can't I can get that. Um David says, yeah, if all else fail fails, just try with our magnet switches around. Magnet well, magnet switched around. Okay, yeah, there you go. Um, Firefly, he wrote um the large and small of the mind, very physics dense but conceptually interesting, could be an opening to how thoughts spontaneously arise and facilitation of disconnecting from them conceptually. Cool. I think that that related to maybe more about Penrose. Yeah, maybe. Okay, thank you for sharing that. I'll definitely check that out. I am doing some work in philosophy, so this will be great. Firefly says, as a biologist, I always had issues with thoughts aren't yours. But quantum mechanics provides a scientifically valid solution certain soon week. Yeah. Oh, we could go on forever. I so wish we could chat about this. Yeah. I I mean, I just would I would just have so many questions about the thoughts aren't yours.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
I mean, who are you? That's part of part of the fun here. What do we get to claim as us and that that?
SPEAKER_01
Does, yeah, three purple hearts to that.
SPEAKER_02
And that does uh it does have meaning at many levels, and then there's um some levels where it just gets interesting. David says, I've got a few swear hours. Well, I unfortunately am back on deadline, so I do not, but my goodness, I've really had a blast with you all and and learned here from you. And that's just so fun. I have several things to check out when I get a chance. And uh hope to see you back and continue the adventures.
