• Practical Work on Self (PWOS 5)

    December 12, 2021

    In prayer, or when I meditate, my mind wanders incessantly and I have to keep bringing it back.

    This is the human experience. The ordinary mind is continuously turning over with mostly meaningless content. I’m not aware of it during the day because my activities and body sensations are dominant. Ordinary life is grounding. When I am tired or sleeping, the ongoing mental content becomes more evident. It’s a kind of ongoing ‘subvocalization’ or commentary often entirely disconnected from my life. I call it the ‘backdrop’. It’s a whole fantasy dream world exposed when I become inactive.

    This backdrop can be exposed in meditation or prayer.

    The first remedy is always to place attention on sensation. Voluntary attention cuts the backdrop’s power cord.

    But there is more. We are three part beings…body, psyche (thought and emotion) and presence. The psyche is in disorder so I cannot remain in the present. I am therefore vulnerable to being drawn into the backdrop. Entering the present with voluntary attention on sensation is a partial remedy. A further remedy is to encounter my timeless identity, the true ‘I’ that is found through the doorway of presence, where I meet myself as I always was. My original face before time began.

    Prayer can enable you to meet your real self. The One who is remembered in prayer enables me to remember myself. I am called to my true identity, as I was created in the beginning. When this happens, you won’t be satisfied to live in the unstable, inexhaustible churning of the psyche. You will sense that something is missing.

    Is this what it means to be present?

    It fulfills presence. I can ask to be present in the present and dis-identify from my personality. That’s stepping up to the threshold. Someone or something calls me through to the other side where I am who I always was. I am re-membered. It may make you uncomfortable to think of this someone as God but this greater presence needs no name.

    How do I know if I am having the experience of my original face?

    This is hard to express in words but I’ll try. There is a deep feeling of familiarity with myself that is wordless and timeless…a feeling that is direct, not mediated or derived from something else. The state recognizes itself. There is a sensation as if my face is shining. And there is a sense of being seen, as if I am facing in the right direction for an intimate meeting with an honored guest. There is nothing grim or forced. It’s a feeling of perfect security as if I have come home.

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  • Into the Present

    June 13, 2019

    I am sure you know this, but I will say it anyway. There is a great difference between entering the present and being present. But perhaps this is a distinction that is easy to lose?

    From my perspective, entering the present is perhaps the most important transition that I can make of my own will. I voluntarily bring attention into my sensations and surroundings. I enter present time…not the illusory future or the invented past where I tend to spend most of my energy. I sacrifice thinking about the things that are not part of my immediate experience.

    Now, you may disagree that this transition is an action of my will. Perhaps I am surprised by something beautiful, a sound, a word, a gesture that draws me into the present. True, but even then, I agree to be drawn or the drawing quickly passes.

    But who enters the present? Why me, of course. I have identities, history, future engagements, places to go and people to meet, but I have temporarily brought attention out of them and into the present. Nonetheless, these realities inevitably shape and limit the present that I engage with. And if I react to incoming stimulus, my reactions will likely be my standard, habitual reactions.

    If my presence should happen to become present in the present, something very different occurs. I am no longer me. The presence of my presence has entered the present and I am temporarily unidentified. This immediately opens up space for seeing and responding differently. Past and future still exist but they are not me, they can be present in an expanded Present Moment without determining my state. What is it that makes the invocation of presence into the present possible? In my experience, it is an act of submission, of giving myself up.

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  • Waiting

    March 26, 2019

    Knowingly or not, we spend much of our time waiting for things to happen, or not happen, dates to arrive or pass. Can you see this? Can you sense how it narrows your attention and prevents you from being where and when you are?

    Real waiting is a powerful mode of being. I do not wish to denigrate it. Consciously waiting for something valued, without agitation or impatience, provides an accommodation for arrival and a thankful response. Real waiting is shot through with faith and love. Voluntary attention brings such waiting into the present. But not so with my unconscious waiting.

    Most of us have some sort of dream-like expectation of the future which is half-acknowledged and never fully embraced in the present. See if you can find it. Are you preparing every day for its realization? As you wait, are you preparing to be worthy of the gift? Or are you afraid to really commit to waiting, watching and preparing because you fear it may not happen? Does a vague hope of some good thing occupy your mind subconsciously without your diligent participation?

    The things we wait for shape our lives in a hundred ways. Can you engage with this? First Corinthians tells us that the three great virtues are faith, hope and love (charity). Do not think of these as separate. Hope alone will not sustain you. All three virtues are needed for real waiting.

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  • Simulation

    December 6, 2018

    I’m intrigued by the idea from the Matrix movies that we live in a simulation but we have the possibility to live in the real world.

    This is a work idea worth exploring. It can be taken on different levels. The first step is to find evidence of living in a simulation.

    In the movie version, the simulation looks exactly like what we think of as the real world but the laws of physics do not actually apply if the characters are able to convince themselves that they are living in a simulation. When the movie characters enter the real world where the laws of physics do apply, they are able to re-enter the simulation and manipulate it provided they do not identify with their simulated self. The star character is the one who is able to remain dis-identified and remember that he is in a simulation.

    Is this an analogy that we can work with?

    Yes and no. Can you find evidence of the simulation you are living in? This is not a theoretical or speculative question. I suggest to you that your simulation is of your own making and it does not closely resemble the real world. The simulation is not a perfect facsimile of the real world, as we see in the movie, but rather an extreme editing of it.

    What is my simulation? It’s my habitual way of seeing and thinking. It’s a framework that selectively leaves out most of what is happening around me. It’s my expectations and fears that unconsciously shape the placement of my attention. Do you see that most of what you worry about does not actually happen?

    As I speak to you, I hear the sound of traffic, the soft murmur of tires on wet pavement, the reflection of street lights off moving cars onto the ceiling of the room where we sit. As I listen to you, and respond to your questions and comments, I continue to hear the sounds, see the patterns of light, which shape my sensing and feeling of being here and alter my disposition towards you in ways that I know as they occur.

    Living in the present is engaging consciously with the world outside my simulation, not with effort but with ease.

    What prevents the integration of my experience? Rejection of my environment is one thing. Obsessive identification with the thinker or the self of my personal narrative is another. A dis-identified state lets more in, edits less. It is very valuable to catch the editor at work, commenting, critiquing and thereby missing what is happening even as it unconsciously shapes my moods and reactions.

    When I play a computer game I identify with my character.

    Yes. This is a possible value of playing these games…to learn not to identify with your character. Of course, once you have learned this, you may have no further interest in the game. And that raises disturbing questions about how you can survive without the momentum you get from your simulation.

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  • Manoeuvring

    November 10, 2018

    Am I free to proceed with my wishes and obligations? Or am I limited and constrained at every turn, leaving me frustrated and unfulfilled?

    Of course nothing ever proceeds according to plan. Success depends upon the ability to manoeuvre. The glorious sensation of being unimpeded comes not mostly from external circumstances but more so from a lack of internal resistance and dissent.

    When I cannot proceed with my intentions, I need to see and think differently, without criticism and distress. But what I tend to do is re-enforce or create obstacles which are mostly in the software of my thinking and habitual reactions rather than in the circumstances themselves. Why? Observing the sensations in me will tell the tale. Am I looking for excuses to quit and fail; wanting sympathy; hoping to draw attention to myself; indulging in the mechanical pleasure of emotional reactions; enjoying the momentary excitement of agitation? These behaviours almost always serve a narrative…a story about me and an image I hold of myself.

    Unwinding the narrative opens up space, providing the room to manoeuvre.

    Can I see the limiting mechanisms objectively, not judging, blaming or defending? If so, perhaps I can learn to step lightly around obstacles and move with the possibilities revealed to me in the present.

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  • Black (2)

    September 14, 2018

    Sitting in the black room, I lose my orientation. I don’t know which way I’m facing or even if my eyes are open.

    Yes. What effect does this have on your thinking?

    I expected that I would be left in a state of confusion, where my thoughts would simply run around in my head, but mostly this didn’t happen. I actually felt less dominated by my thoughts, more free to simply be there and be in the present.

    This is a useful observation. But perhaps this is beginner’s luck? You are responding to something new. Our ‘normal’ sense of orientation is very locked in. I automatically step into myself when I sense myself in habitual ways, chief among them being the visual sense of facing in a certain direction, sensing that I am looking outside from inside my head and seeing my hands in front of me. Removing these familiar inputs opens up the possibility of disengaging from the usual.  I may find this energizing.

    What happens over time, after many hours of sitting in black silence? The real test is supplied by boredom. In ordinary life, outside the black room, boredom is disguised by my habitual engagement with people and things to do. I fall into identification with my experience, much of which centers around disagreement and resistance which ensure a steady parade of reactions to keep me occupied.

    In the black room, boredom is less disguised. Do I ‘invent’ illusory content…imagining events, conversations, having discussions with myself to fill the void? If the mind outlives the body, is this my experience after death? Do I then wish to reconstitute my life before death with all the same ‘amusements’, in an attempt to defeat the boredom? And do my suppressed impulses and my guilt manifest karmically as ‘unfriendly’ guides, as they call them in Vajrayana? To what extent is my experience now, in this life, determined by these same…but less visible… mechanical impulses?

    After a few sessions in the black room, I begin to notice that I am sometimes visualizing…it’s a kind of light show, eyes open or closed, displaying indistinct imagery of completely irrelevant and fictitious action…a movie without an apparent script. Is this actually going on all the time, even when I am doing my daily routine? Is this what it means to be living in a dream world even while I’m ‘awake’? Does this imagery unconsciously shape the way I perceive? Can this subconscious visualization be stopped?

    Perhaps I can now begin the serious work of learning to remain present in the present, an aim which requires that I know and resist the process of falling asleep, that is, falling into the automatic dreaming of the mechanical mind. This might be useful after death. It might be even more useful now.

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