• Awake (4)

    October 23, 2015

    But what are the practical requirements for awakening?

    The first requirement is need. Perhaps that should be Need. Curiosity may work once or twice. Self enhancement or other ambitions are not likely to work at all. For whom do you wish to be present? Who needs you to awaken and why?

    The process begins with voluntary attention followed by impartial attention. Observe self objectively. Know that you are asleep and see the patterns of your sleep, in real time. Then you are ready to take the next step.

    You need a great deal of energy to awaken the machine. In this moment, can you stop wasting energy? Can you reverse the flow of energy from down and out of the body to up and in? Your sleeping machine is probably reacting to something and harbors ordinary emotions. Knowing the exact formulation of your reaction in physical terms, can you withhold the expression of it? No judgement. Please understand this is not a general condemnation of expression. This is about gathering the energy to awaken at this time.

    Now, what will you do with this emotional energy? Can you invoke impartial attention or presence to digest and transform it? Can you at the same time release the associated tensions and sensations so that you are not dragged into identification? Attention and presence are energies of a higher order; invoking them initiates energy generation, upgrading sensation into conscious energy. Can this process continue?  Can presence see and counter the tendency to fall into identification?

    Does your heart now awaken? Conscious energy makes this possible. Perhaps you can voluntarize a feeling that is essentially part of you…reverence, objective sorrow, glorification…whatever is natural to your being. Perhaps you can invoke the feeling that is most accessible in the space where you are. Some spaces are aligned with specific feelings, making them ‘sacred’. Perhaps you have discovered that all the requirements of awakening are contained in genuine prayer. Feeling brings more energy of a higher kind. Body, mind and heart working together intensify the energy. Perhaps your machine now awakens.

    To remember (re-member) is first to bring together all the disparate parts of your being into being. For whom do you do make this effort? For whom do you wish to awaken? Then, in turn, you may be remembered as one of the Work community.

    Related Posts:

    Awake (3) – Oct 16, 2015

    Awake (2) – Oct 10, 2015

    Awake – Oct 7, 2015

    Mastery (2) – June 3, 2015

    Observe What Exactly? – Mar 12, 2015

    Observing self/self-observation – Mar 10, 2015

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  • Awake (3)

    October 16, 2015

    So you are really proposing a kind of hierarchy of possible states, from sleep to presence to awakening.

    Yes. Actually, it starts with voluntary attention, which establishes a separation in sleep between the machine and something not of the machine. This separation is very important. Voluntary attention, which we might call mindfulness, already introduces a restless quality to the sleep state. The machine still operates on automatic but it is observed.

    If the attention is impartial, meaning not directed by the head brain, that is another step, which is only a hair’s breadth from presence, the source of voluntary, impartial attention. Presence completes the process of dis-identification with something added…a sense of existing as something unidentifiable, ineffable, unboundaried, another kind of ‘I’.

    In presence, movement into voluntary states of invocation becomes possible, but these states are easily interrupted by the momentum of sleep in the machine. Nonetheless, these transitory engagements weaken the conditioning of the machine over time.

    Finally, we come to the awakened state. The machine is sufficiently energized by voluntary efforts of attention and presence that the heart awakens, providing the additional energy and assistance required to unite all the provinces of human nature into one kingdom, subject to one ‘I’. The awakened human is now a human being, occupying its intended place at the nexus between higher and lower, where matter becomes spirit and spirit becomes matter. This is where the Work begins.

    Now, I have made this seem a logical progression because our simple minds like to operate in this way. But the relationship between these states is often non-sequential and may involve help from unusual sources. The steps are a dance which covers the same ground in many different ways. Do not assume you can accomplish this path through your own efforts. Great humility is required. You will likely need a motive outside of your own enhancement.

    Perhaps I will regret this simplification which could encourage you to look ahead and fantasize about your status. However, Vajrayana teachers I have known occasionally introduced their students to the ‘view’ as they called it, and they did not seem to regret it.
    To Be Continued…

    Related Posts:

    Awake (2) – Oct 10, 2015

    Awake – Oct 7, 2015

    Illusion of ‘I’ – Sept 19, 2015

    Invocation – June 10, 2015

    Mastery (1) – May 15, 2015

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  • Invocation of Presence

    August 10, 2015

    In the group we talk about invoking presence and using the formula of  “I invoke the presence of my presence into the present.” How does this actually work?

    Let’s begin by understanding what the invocation implies. First, it implies that humans can call things to them. This is a very important point. It is possible for us to ask and then receive. It is often not required that we know how to produce something for ourselves. Some very valuable attainments are possible only for the asking, and only by asking.

    Real asking is a special state. Usually we ask as a kind of complaint, as a statement that we are lacking something. Or our asking is a kind of demand. Perhaps you ask with the expectation that you will be denied. All these forms of asking are unworthy and unlikely to succeed. Real asking is a supplication, based in quiet submission. The one who invokes relaxes and gives way.

    Presence always exists but it is often not present; it is, in fact, absent. Therefore, the invocation is for presence to be present in the present, in the tangible here and now. This form of invocation also implies that experiencing the present is not the same thing as being present. The present is ‘here and now’. Being present is ‘I am here now’ but the ‘I’ is not like any I that I know.

    Who invokes presence?

    Why, the sleeping machine of course, who else is there? By the machine I mean the organic body and the ordinary mental apparatus together with all of the usual habits and identifications. The machine invokes. In that gesture, it relaxes itself and invites another to occupy it, which is presence. But do not think that presence is just another identity or entity of a better sort. Presence is not a thing, an entity. It is a state of being which is entirely without boundaries to define it. Presence conveys a sense of existing but not as something.

    How can I know I am present?

    Presence knows directly and immediately that it is present. To be present means not being identified. It is not unusual to experience the state of presence as spacious, somewhat luminous, more ‘aware’ and so on. When the machine notes these transitory phenomena, it then tries to manufacture them in order to fabricate presence. The asking is lost. This approach is always unsuccessful. The machine is completely other than presence and presence is not defined by any phenomena.

    Is this invocation the only way to be present?

    Certainly not. Your relationship with certain people, places and tasks may call you to be present. Your machine submits so that you can enter into the relationship and share the intimacy of presence. Zikr calls my presence by invoking a greater presence. Noticing my mechanical patterns of sleep can invite presence to be present.

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