The Dot

1. Decide for yourself to stare at the dot at the center of the work for as long as possible.

2. Stare at the dot, making sure to take note of the fact that you are staring at the dot while you are staring at the dot, and be sure to question why exactly you are staring at the dot—that is, that you decided to stare at the dot.

3. Afterward, think about who decided to stare at the dot (the person perpetually deciding to stare at the dot) and who is carrying out that activity (the actual eyes, body, staring at the dot). Is there a difference between deciding and the actual carrying out of an activity? How does the body enter into this? Is this a command/obey relationship? Question this.

4. Most importantly, if you are constantly deciding to stare at the dot while staring the dot (in effect, making lots of little decisions to stare at the dot adds up to a make-shift larger concept "staring at the dot,"--in effect, leaping from decision to decision) then who is obeying these little decisions to stare at the dot? It would not seem to be the body, but rather some kind of internal will obeying my commands. How does a decision really work? Question this.

...a decision can be considered a command which I give to myself to the extent to which my body appears to me not even as an anonymous mask of an alien force but as the autonomy of a person with its own intentions and its own initiative. Thus I converse with it, and it becomes a second person: "You shake, you old carcass, but if you knew...." Though we may discount the rhetorical aspect which slips into such expressions, we must also admit that self-consciousness carries with it permanently the possibility of such redoubling, of such a dialogue with itself. My relation to myself is like that of a younger and an older brother: I respond for my part like an other who listens, imitates, obeys. In presence of value I sense myself more the younger; in the face of an action in which my body is refractory, I feel more like the elder. This situation is...basic and permanent. To think is to speak to myself, to will is to command myself. In this sense we speak of self-control and use the imperative in second person singular or even plural to express a decision: "Let's go, old man, we've got to get on!"...

But in the end decision is not a true command, only a command by analogy. My body is not another person. The duality arising in consciousness is a duality within the very heart of the first person: this is why the subject of the action intended in the project is the same subject who is implicit or explicit in the very act of deciding and intending the project: I who decide am the I who will do. (Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, 47-48).