Toriodal Ambiguation

A Koan

Awareness is a prerequisite of freedom. But how do I increase my awareness? There is an age-old and proven way to do so which goes by the term meditation. A lot of us associate meditation with the idea of sitting cross-legged in a lotus position with closed eyes. And of course one can do that, and for good reasons. The true magic of meditation, though, is the space it opens up inside of me. 

As Buddhist teacher Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche has put it so nicely, it’s about accessing stillness, silence and spaciousness inside of me. There I find the room to wiggle, which will allow me to chose where I want to go. If I don’t *have to* do something, then I’m truly free to choose. So, follow the white rabbit into the wonderland of becoming aware that you are aware…

Chapters:

• 00:00:00 Intro
• 00:00:26 Toriodal Ambiguation – Solo
• 00:05:00 Overcoming the boundaries of conventional thinking
• 00:22:20 Toriodal Ambiguation (Remix)
• 00:28:19 Outro

Image for this episode by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash.

Transcript

Toriodal Ambiguation

I am the one
Who sees me
When I look
To see who sees

There is a room of consciousness
Bigger than us
When we open up to it
No matter how
Information flows from there to us
If we can grasp it and we want to
Its flow transforms and transmutates
From me
To everything else

I am the one
Who sees me
When I look
To see who sees

When for once I understand
I am once again a part of everything

Nevertheless :: Now
Now I am here
This body
This time
Feeling seeing hearing tasting
Mother Nature
Pacha Mama
I am your licking
From water I come
To light I yearn

• ~ Others may soujourn into another direction ~ •
  Until in below and darkenss
  We meet in light again
  All the colous becoming white
  The Now that is this
  The Now that is here

I am the one
Who sees me
When I look
To see who sees

The Nothingness
That is everything not
Resolved to become
Everything everywhere everytime
Towards One
All ways to crest
In every form and every time

And I am the only one
Who knows

I am the one
Who sees me
When I look
To see who sees

All those I’s who yield
Let go into the flow
Take part in this great We
In the one great dance
That is always ending
In all this
That I see

I am the one
Who sees me
When I look
To see who sees

©️ Laughing Brook/Peter Müller 2026

Overcoming the boundaries of conventional thinking

Now today’s poem is a little different. So what the… Toro something what? What is that supposed to mean? 

Well normally I don’t explain poems or the thing I’m talking about in this spot but today because this is a really mean kind of a term I want to do this. And I also want to take you on a little ride. So you feel relaxed, you sit comfortably. Alright, let’s go. 

Toroidal ambiguity. Toroiadal – what does that mean? Let me read you a definition that I found on a German scientific website called Spectrum DE. 

Toroiadal: First, the form of a torus. Second, the direction of the larger circummount in a torus. Third, the topological equivalent to a torus. 

The latter two definitions are rather technical but the first one I find pretty exciting. The form of a torus. What is a torus? A torus is a universal form really in the most true sense of the word, for this form appears in all over our universe. An apple for example has a toroiadal form. The magnet field around our planet earth of our solar system and of our galaxy have the form of a torus. And cutting edge physics is speculating that even the whole universe could be a torus. 

If you don’t know what a torus is or what it looks like imagine a single spot from which a line arises that circles around this spot and in continuously widening circles moves upwards. So what appears is something like sort of a funnel which is named vortex. This vortex, if it expands further and further upwards, eventually begins to bend around itself. So it moves downwards and begins to become narrower and narrower until eventually it reaches this single spot again. So there is a vortex that appears and that becomes smaller and smaller until it reaches this infinitely small spot practically a nothing. Exactly the point where everything started. For the mathematicians among my hearers, I’m speaking of a horn torus. So in practical terms that means if you think of a donut, but the whole inside of a donut being this infinitely small spot, that would be a horn torus. Or just enter horn torus in a search engine and look at the pictures you’ve been shown. 

This principle of the torus – everything evolving out of nothing – also exists on the level of consciousness. Buddhists have named it as rigpa, that is pure clear consciousness which is according to Buddhism where we as humans are headed as our ultimate goal. This is everlasting now, it’s pure being. To open themselves for it, Buddhists meditate. If you have a meditative practice, and I can really recommend that, because it is a way to true inner and outer freedom – so, if you’re meditating then you probably discovered this inner observer that is the instance inside of me that observes me while I am meditating. And if I look at it there is another instance that observes the observing observer. And if you continue down that line it appears that this chain of observers never ends. There’s always one more. So this is another toroidal chain, but here in the field of consciousness. 

And in tantrism which is another ancient Asian philosophy just like Buddhism there’s also this understanding. So with Tantra I don’t mean you know Neo Tantra that you may have heard of. This is really about an ancient spiritual tradition from Asia that in a lot of respects is not that far away from Buddhism even though in detail there are a lot of differences. Both seem to come from the same root. And I would like to quote Christopher D. Wallace who wrote in his wonderful book Tantra Illuminated about this view. 

“All that exists throughout all time and beyond is one infinite divine consciousness. Free and blissful which projects within the field of its awareness a vast multiplicity of apparently differentiated subjects and objects.” 

So, to put it in other words, the whole universe is an expression of this one consciousness. Exactly that which Buddhists dub rigpa or in our Christian hemisphere we call it God. But God is a bit of a difficult term because everyone defines God slightly different and for some people it’s really a loaded term. But having said that, the idea of divine presence in all of creation is something that’s in Judaism and Christianity very central, as it is in Islam. ”In God we live and move and have our being,“ the Apostle Paul is quoted in the Book of Acts. There’s nothing outside of this consciousness that is God and that created everything. 

So this is toroidal, and then there’s this other strange term “ambiguation”. I admit right away I invented this word. It wasn’t around before I used it. There is the term “disambiguation” which means to clarify multiple meanings, to make a meaning unique and clear. But today’s poem tries to do the exact opposite of this to create multiple meanings. So why that? Do I want to confuse you? 

Well there are many situations in life in which it is very important and very useful to have a clear exact statement. Is the stove on or off when I leave the house? Is the road closed or is it open so I could drive there? How long is the distance to where I’m going to? But there are also other areas in which such clarity doesn’t really get you anywhere. 

In Zen Buddhism for example the koan is a means to sort of diffuse our clarities. A koan is a question that a master asks a student or which I could ask myself also. So those are questions like Who is inside? What is the other or what is consciousness? There is no real proper and unique answer to such a question. 

So what happens is I start searching and questing and struggling for an answer. You know, and I might be really hard on myself because I cannot come up with a reasonable solution to answer such a question. While I do this I experience feelings like being confused, feeling powerless, anger possibly, maybe even desperation. But I can also encounter patience, awareness, lateral thinking, a change of perspective and other very useful things while I pursue such a question. This is strongly a process in which by all activity I’m not really doing anything. I seize control. I hold the sword lightly. I know that I don’t know. It is a process which could possibly open me to intuition. 

And along that path at some point I possibly might arrive at something like insight. An insight that is beyond my ratio and my common sense or good judgment. This common sense that Albert Einstein once defined as the sum of all prejudices that we accumulated up to our 18th year of living. 

To reach such a point frequently is an experience, not primarily a rational process. It’s more like a real eureka moment where all of a sudden very effortless and very matter effect my horizon expands. It’s like walking across a ridge that you’ve been walking towards for hours and it just looks like a ridge. As you reach it and you’re up there, a whole new landscape opens up in front of you. Something I haven’t seen before and I could not see before. And it might even create a sense of excitement. So to put it in a really short statement, my consciousness has expanded. 

So it’s really like the inner observer, the one I already mentioned, enters into a larger, wider room space and is able to take in more, perceive more. I have become another after I sojourned this path with the koan. When I engage with it, allow myself to be on it, in it. Which is quite a cool thing when you think of it. For it creates more freedom. That is, new ways of looking at things and thus new ways of acting that I haven’t had before. So I become freer. 

In my experience and in my observation, everything that is, is a torus. Everything is connected with everything. That is, by the way, in my book, The Circle of Life that will be published soon. 

There are different levels of consciousness that expand far beyond space-time of the known universe. Via the path of meditation, I can connect with those levels. And this eventually will alter my everyday consciousness. I know this is wild stuff. But more consciousness about the relationship, the connectedness of things, is in our time today more urgent than ever. And that’s why a little toroidal ambiguation might actually do some good. So, toroidal ambiguation. 

And then there’s a third and last aspect, and maybe you’re willing to forgive me. And that’s my love for words. I simply love to play with words. And toroidal ambiguation is simply supercalafragilistic expialidocious.

Outro:

Hey, you really made it all the way to the end of this podcast. Congratulations. This was a bit of a wild one and it’s probably… no, it is my longest episode so far. Sometimes when you think about spirituality, it’s not just all airy-fairy. There is a point to really diving in deeply and digging deeply to eventually gain what I would deem like a larger picture. And this is what this episode was about. So thank you for listening. The next one will be called No Way and it’s about a much simpler topic, that is, saying no. 

Until then, please feel free to leave a rating, a thumbs up, whatever –your stars, they are my stars. And if you want to send a comment or share this podcast, I’d be happy if you do that. My name is Laughing Brook, I’m a poet, mystic, dancer, nature coach and man whisperer. Thank you for listening and keep on flowing, bumping and jumping with the stream of life.