When I invoke presence, I pivot, I turn towards the real world.
What is the real world? It is easier to describe what it is not. It is not the world of my personality, the world of the things I want, my anxieties or ambitions, my worries and fears, my roles in life. Being present, other things can enter, the possibility of feeling, of open perception, an objective view. My state is a prayer. I stand at the doorway.
Being present does not last long. The reverberations of the machine…the body and mind…continue and pull me back into habitual living. The life of the world beckons. How to remain in the real world? We are advised to waken the machine. What does this mean? In the waking state, body and mind have no negative emotion…no emotion that drains my energy down and out. (Negative in the electrical sense, as much true of euphoria as anger.) I am translucent. I have energy. I am an energy transformation device converting sensation to consciousness and consciousness to love. I enter the real world.
You may think you can ‘do’ this…become present, waken the machine, join the work. Perhaps you can release your personality for a moment and call your presence to be. To waken, much more is required. Your attention must be able to hold, note every flutter of habitual sensation, thought and emotion and release them as they arise. With no discharge, you fill with energy and higher functioning is possible. This is exaltation.
Some teachers of the work state the rules of procedure for waking the machine. You cannot rely on them. The rules come after the experience. They become clear when you have travelled the path. You cannot begin with a view of the end point. You struggle to observe self. You see that all higher states are gifts. You slowly fall in love with the simple, with nature, with smiles and small gestures.
Trying to awaken is like trying to put hay through the wrong end of the elephant. One day, your experiences will begin to waken you, when you have stopped your pathetic need to react to everything habitually and your ambitions fall away. Then you can work.
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August 6, 2022
Tags: awaken, invoke, pivot, presence, present, Real World, work
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November 30, 2018
Do I see how I fill up my life? Do I see how my time is stolen from me by habitual ‘doings’?
Can I stop the momentum of my life and make room for communication with the Absolute?
Each of us needs to find a way to invoke higher emotion in order to enter into communication with His Endlessness. Have you found yours?
Could I recommend that you consider glorification?
What is glorification? It’s a profound pleasure…praise, adoration and joy all rolled into one. The great thing about glorification is that it has no place whatsoever in ordinary life. Nothing merits glorification except the universal being. Therefore, I have not learned how to fake it. It has another advantage. It seems to me that the universal being likes to be remembered in this way…it brings out the best in Him…so He participates with pleasure.
Beware of the standard prescriptions. I hear some of you say that you must learn to be thankful for all that you have been given. This is a frequent refrain in most spiritual schools. Has anyone here figured out how to be thankful? Can you turn it on when you think it is appropriate? Unfortunately, most of us can. I frequently pretend to be thankful in situations where it is socially expected. Furthermore, most of my thanks are directed at people and that’s just not the same as His Endlessness. But your experience may be different.
I think every human has a note or tone that derives from the Absolute…His calling card to Himself, placed in you. There are many such qualities but there is probably one that you are most able to invoke because it is innately you. Following someone else’s direction on what this is for you is not likely to work.
We do not make room for the Absolute if He is just an idea. Can you find something in common with Him, an inducement, a dart of pure pleasure which supports a relationship?
Tags: Absolute, glorification, habitual doings, higher emotion, His Endlessness, invoke, making room, time
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February 21, 2016
I sit in the meditation chamber. I agree to wait. I am not waiting for anything, just waiting. I am content with whatever happens. I am content with whatever will happen. It is enough to wait.
Since I am waiting and there is nothing in particular to do, I ask to be alert. Can I be alert? Alert but not tense, alert but also relaxed.
While I am in this state of waiting, not for anything in particular, just waiting, I invoke attention. Attention engages sensation as I wait. I summon a field of attention which surrounds me. I ask that attention penetrate my heart. I sit with this. There is no move to make. I can wait, not moving on.
Energy arises. My body is intensely sensitized. Can I awaken now, physically, mentally, all that I am? Can I simply be?
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The awakened state can be discovered in meditation. It does not require special efforts.
What awakens? The parts of me that sleep. Which parts are sleeping? My physical organism, my mind and heart. They stumble about in confused darkness, enmeshed in dream-fragments, unable to gather the energy to awaken. Presence is always able to participate, waiting, willing to enter when called to take its place as vice-regent of the city of my being. But presence cannot enter when my city is sleeping and the dominion of presence is denied by my identification with other roles and aims.
What is awakening? Lighting up the city with the correct energetic charge, harmonizing its different departments and stopping up the leaks. Who is to accomplish this work? Voluntary, impartial attention. It arouses energy and activates the heart, unifying the city, enabling presence to enter. The city awakens.
But, before the desirable can be accomplished, the undesirable must be relinquished.
Can the usual efforts to do something be abandoned?
Can ordinary thinking be released?
Can involuntary attention on habit-formed boundaries be withdrawn?
Removing limits opens the way to a real encounter with the miracle of being.
The city’s defenses fall away and sleep is overwhelmed.
The secret is in the asking.
Tags: attention, awake, being, impartial, invoke, involuntary, presence, release, sleep, voluntary
