From Core to Periphery — The Path of Inquiry
To know ourselves from the inside out is to embrace both our personal story and our timeless presence.
This inquiry isn’t about self-perfection or purification. It’s about clarity, presence, and freedom from the dominance of ego.
“This is not a purification game. When you read the word purify in yoga texts, try replacing it with “clarify”. This is not about destroying personality, perceived faults…any of that. It is about paying attention and discovering who you are on all levels. It’s about gaining freedom from the incessant domination of ego.”
— Patty Townsend, Embodyoga Teacher Training 2016
What is Core? What is Periphery?
Radiant Awareness is the core of who we are. Core Radiance animates and penetrates the entire field of form. Everything that has form is peripheral to core. Form has structure, whereas core has none. Form moves, core is still.
Our living forms are fully animated and nurtured by Core Radiance. Although core and periphery are seamlessly united in our embodied experience, for the purposes of inquiry, we can differentiate them.
We are made of both radiance and form — awareness and form make up the very cloth of our existence.
We so often forget our very nature — Radiant Awareness. We tend to mistake our wildly fluctuating thoughts and feelings for the center of who we are, when in fact, our qualities and traits, thoughts and emotions are superficial to our inner radiance.
Individuality is part of the dance of life. Our forms and structures are not obstacles to clear vision. But without intentionally differentiating them from core, we often remain preoccupied with trying to perfect life in form — a goal that is not only misguided but impossible.
As long as we are alive, we are woven amalgams of radiance and form. The only lasting satisfaction available to our human selves is to recognize that who we are at our core is this clear, bright field of potentiality, intelligence, and nurturant power.
From that recognition, the field of action and form takes on meaning. It becomes possible to feel the importance of participating in life — becoming active agents in the union of form and radiance.
We are freed from the compulsive need to refine and purify our individuality. We are creatures with traits and tendencies — and that’s fine.
This is not a purification game. It is a practice of determined inquiry and constancy of attention — of staying on track and living with as much integrity as possible. Satisfaction comes from gaining direct perceptual access to Core Radiance, without clinging to or rejecting the personal.
With diligence, intelligence, and agency, we hone in on core. And in finding our home within the universal, we are finally freed to enter the game of life with gusto, the wisdom to make good choices, and even to experience joy.
Through the process of differentiation, we gain the tools to recognize the entire field of life — ourselves and the phenomenal world — as an inseparable weave of radiance and its partner, form.
The Inquiry Begins — Who Am I?
Life lived in form is complicated. Our individual, self-defining thoughts and feelings constantly rise and fall. It can be confusing. Who am “I” in all of this?
It’s easy to define ourselves by our experiences. I am a human being, a person with opinions, thoughts, and emotions. I have roles in life. I love. I get angry. I feel sadness and joy. I was born somewhere, observe and study life, and have various personal characteristics.
But… who has these experiences?
Well, “I” do.
But who am I? Do I even know?
It's a reasonable question.
If I am not my self-definitions and thoughts… who am I?
Who would “I be” if all self-concepts and self-reflective thoughts were stripped away? Would there be anyone left? Could I define that person as “me” if all the traits were simply extinguished? Do my personal experiences define me, or is there a more inclusive universality that contains the “me” that I take myself to be?
Is there a core reality that underlies and supports the personal? A universal core that, without denying the personal, is larger than the individual self?
Experiences happen. But who is having them?
The swirling qualities and traits that we often take to be our essential self are not the true core “I”. They may appear to be, but they are simply concepts perceiving other concepts, taking themselves to be the ultimate observer. But they can’t be — because they too are swirling within the field of form.
A Teaching from My Father
My father was a film director. When I was about eighteen, he explained it like this:
“You are sitting in a theater and the screen is dark. The light of the projector turns on and illuminates the blank screen. Just light. Just light on an empty screen.
Then, the picture starts to roll, and the film’s images are projected onto the screen. The projector’s light flows through the densities and colors of the film, and we observe shapes and movements that form a story. Eventually, we become absorbed in the images and their story. We lose track of the light.”
The projector’s light is the steady, shining radiance of awareness. The film is the individual — refracting and distributing that uniform light to create images on the screen. The film is always changing, but it depends entirely on the constancy of the light for its expression.
We are the play of light and form. The light is constant. The images shift.
The images on the screen have no existence apart from the light. They exist on the screen only because the light is shining through the film. The film holds the story. The shapes and colors of the film are illuminated by the light and together they create the images and stories we observe on the screen.
Our lives are like this. We think we are the images on the screen — and in part, of course we are. But those images are simply characteristics and traits — illuminated by a deeper light.
Without the light, no images. Without the images, no movie. The story of our lives depends on both to exist. And, we tend to identify with the story as it unfolds, completely forgetting about the light that makes it possible.
The invitation is not to eliminate or purify the film but to see it for what it is — an interesting movie.
How Do We Navigate This?
The qualities and traits encoded in the film are uniquely ours. Our own blend of qualities and personalities creates our story. The personal gives shape, form, and movement to life. But it’s important to place the personal in proper perspective.
It’s all about perspective.
When the personal mistakenly believes itself to be the whole show, we suffer. It’s a case of mistaken identity — and it leads to cycles of disillusionment and frustration in the ever-changing world of form.
Perspective is Critical
The personal is necessary for life’s texture and complexity. The personal is where we find all relationship, action, movement, and creativity. The stuff of life. When understood and integrated, personal self can be a powerful instrument for participating and contributing to the whole.
In yoga, we refer to the hub of the personal self — the ego-mind — as the “I-maker.” It’s the center of self-definition, where identity and differentiation arise.
While a mature ego is useful, an immature ego creates problem after problem. An untamed, un-contextualized ego — one that doesn’t know where it came from — easily gets caught in trying to fill an endless pit of desire looking for relief from its own bereft sense of isolation:
Am “I” getting enough or not? Do “I” have what “I” want? Who will fulfill “my” needs?
All basic stuff that must be handled — but when our sense-of-self is limited to individual awareness and hasn’t yet experienced the universal context in which it lives, it becomes hijacked by desire after desire that can never be fulfilled.
Ego-mind doesn’t even want to be in charge. It wants and needs guidance. The personal sense-of-self needs to know its place within a larger whole. You wouldn’t want a self-centered two-year-old to dictate the course of your life. Just like that, the erratic and self-involved ego shouldn’t be in charge. It doesn’t know what’s good for you. It needs a loving helpful hand. It needs containment. It needs to know who it is and how it can participate most usefully.
Once the personal self understands its true relationship to the whole, perspective opens. It can release its frantic grip and yield to something larger. The individual self gains comfort in knowing that it is part of something greater — a game where it doesn’t define the rules, but is invited to play.
For most of us… this requires practice.
Constancy of Attention is Practice
We practice by growing the constancy of our attention. Attention is practice. There are many techniques for practice and they all enlist the power of paying attention — steady attention to what is present — the fullness of what is present, right now.
Breathing? Pay attention.
Moving, meditating, talking, cooking, swimming, dancing, loving, hating…
Pay attention.
Real, sustained attention cracks the whole thing open.
Practice means cultivating an uncommonly consistent stream of attention.
Radiance and Form Are Playing — and We’re It
Recognizing all this is the challenge. These truths are self-evident, yet often obscured by our attachment to our own processes and self-concepts.
We are so absorbed in the peripheral story of who we are that we miss what’s most alive and foundational — radiant awareness and form, in playful unity.
That’s the path of inquiry. It begins wherever we are. At first, awareness may feel superficial. Our deeper nature may seem hidden. It doesn’t matter. The journey is the same. Through close attention to sensation, movement, and thought, we begin to see.
Form is necessary for witnessing formlessness.
We meditate on the structures and processes of which we are made. Drawn by our desire to know ourselves and our inner sensing and feeling, we go deeper within. We learn to feel and know directly what is happening right here… right now.
And in time, form reveals formlessness — and the formless reveals the beauty of form.
Practice: Bring It Into Your Body
Conceptual understanding is great — and so helpful. Embodying this inquiry is even better.
How do we do this?
We do it by paying uncommonly persistent attention to our inner bodies, minds, and spirits. By opening to the whole of it. By sensing, feeling, and delving into the weave of consciousness and form that is already present within.
The whole practice is about cultivating open curiosity. It requires some letting go of what you think you already know, and practicing persistent and consistent inquiry into who you might be.
Enjoy the video below! Just 30 minutes to explore the sensuality of the inner body
and (perhaps) feel the radiant web of support within.
Simple postures. Accessible to all. No experience required.
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I found myself exhaling with relief while reading this, Patty. Even in my practice - when I’m moving with mindfulness and assessing what I’m up to from the perspective of yogic and Buddhist ethics - I often lose perspective and become entranced by the periphery.
I find it extremely useful to bring honest attention to my patterns, but if I get lost in the film and obsess over getting every scene and every line perfect (love your dad’s metaphor)... well, it just becomes more of the same. And it just creates distance from the whole and from love.
Thank you for the reminder to hold the periphery a little more lightly, and to touch into the radiant light at our core. ❤️