• Attention-Space

    April 29, 2019

    My unconscious, involuntary attention holds me in time and space. This mechanism makes it possible for me to continue in my ordinary life. As an analogy, this form of attention is like a laser reading the data implanted in a DVD. My life is displayed in a predictable form…even if the events seem to surprise me, my reactions do not.

    When Ouspensky and others talk about eternal recurrence, this is what I think is meant.

    There are two clear signs that involuntary attention is operating. Time is sequential, one moment flowing into another without a stop. And space is dead, just something to be filled up with things but otherwise empty, a negative.

    Can it be otherwise?

    Can there be stillness? I find that there cannot be stillness if I try to stop the flow of time. The river continues to flow and I am swept along in it. To be still requires that I access another dimension of time. What makes this possible? Voluntary attention. Why? Because its nature is not in passing time…its nature is immediate and therefore timeless.

    Can there be spaciousness? Voluntary attention is spaciousness. I enter attention-space where what was empty is alive and full of ‘substance’, not of a physical nature but real nonetheless.

    There is probably nothing more important than reclaiming voluntary attention and then allowing it to perform according to its laws, without interference. This is a moment-to-moment undertaking requiring that ‘I’ participate with subtle skill, not as the subject-center who sees, but as the one who is seen and responds.

    When I try to voluntarize my attention, I find that I cannot control it.

    To voluntarize is not to control. The secret is to participate in attention, like a dance partner. The secret of the secret is that attention is not yours, it’s a gift from the universe, a quality of space itself. When I think of it as mine, I reduce it to myself.

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  • Accumulation

    April 2, 2016

    I seem to have very little free attention. I feel that I am easily overwhelmed by the requirements of everyday life, that I just can’t keep up. This affects me on the job and also my work with the group.

    Have you examined your tendency to accumulate? Do you understand how much it costs you?

    Attention itself is not limited but our capacity for it is. Attention is a form of energy that quickens our life but it is also wears out the nervous system and tires the body, forcing us to rest. It follows that attention needs to be conserved and used wisely. But this is the last thing we consider. We waste attention on a vast scale. And here I would say that accumulation is the biggest problem, a problem that is glaringly obvious but nonetheless hidden from us.

    Consider your possessions. How many of them are actually needed for use in the next several days? Would it not be a very small percentage? You buy things in quantity when they are on sale. You keep things that might be useful someday. You buy food for the next week, assuming you know what you will need or want in the future. Every item you take into your possession has a little bit of your attention on it. You are connected to each of them, even if you are not conscious of it. Each item takes up space. Do you appreciate how restful it is for the mind, how restorative it is for your attention, when the room is nearly empty?

    Storing things up for the future is not always a mistake. But how much of this do you do? Do you forget what you have and acquire more? Perhaps you need to keep track of it, store it correctly and keep an inventory? That means committing more attention to things.

    Then there are all those precious little mementos and keep sakes to remind you of the past, gifts from friends and family, post cards from the dead, photos of home. Perhaps you can afford some of these items. How many? Will your present relationships suffer from inattention?

    You may respond that you keep things because they are beautiful. If you frequently experience their beauty, perhaps some of these items are good to have around. What about keep sakes, would your life actually be poorer without them? No doubt it is nostalgic to engage with them from time to time. Perhaps you think it is your obligation to remember your ancestors. Maybe it helps them in the next life. How much are you willing to pay for this?

    Memories take attention too, without the intermediation of objects. Most of us accumulate memories. We repeat them over and over so that we can remember them. Or you can pull out the photos of that glorious holiday in Spain. All of this takes attention while also reinforcing personal identities.

    If you know what it means to voluntarize your attention, you can begin to take attention back from the places where you have involuntarily left it and re-enter the present. You could begin to simplify your life through a process of de-accumulation. This is what the second phase of your life could look like. Releasing the past, relinquishing your stuff, so that you free your attention for work on self. Also, your family and friends will be spared the dreadful burden of dealing with your stuff when you die. They have enough of their own stuff, as do we all.

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  • Making Life Work

    November 28, 2015

    Some of us have been given specific work tasks but it seems to me that the key to fourth way work on self is to make ordinary life into work.

    This is an important observation. Ordinary life is happening all the time and it’s always providing us with opportunities to observe self and voluntarize attention and presence.

    Ok, what do you mean by voluntarize?

    Let’s start with watching television or a movie. If you have observed yourself in these activities, you know that you tend to identify very quickly with characters or points of view. You involuntarily enter the scene as if it is real. The producers of these entertainments know this, whatever the content may be, including news. Can you, first of all, observe the arousal of identification? By this I mean to observe the sensations and emotions that come up, the preferences that arise, the conflicts you experience when the story line goes against your adopted interests? Observation of self creates some separation from the process of identification and exposes it.

    Now, can you agree to the identifications that arise and enter into them fully? In this case, to voluntarize is to participate actively in the identification. Ordinarily, you are passive. Can you agree to favour one character over another and to experience consciously the emotions the director wishes you to have? What do you discover by doing this? Does this process enable you to see your identifications more clearly and objectively, perhaps even to laugh at them?

    One more exercise. Can you watch the screen, invoke presence and remain present? Perhaps in your body, you experience the tug of identification, the sensations and emotions the director intends, but yet remain present, at least for a few moments at a time? Perhaps you can remain aware of the fact that you are watching the play of light and shadow across the front of a plastic box, which has no reality other than what your attention gives it?

    This is real training. I would say it is more valuable than most of the so-called spiritual exercises that you find in certain schools. This is making life work. You are sitting there anyway, taking in impressions. Why not work as well?

    Related Post:

    Invocation of Presence – Aug 10, 2015

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  • Disappointment

    November 21, 2015

    I am committed to do the work but the difficulties of my life continually take me out of it, leaving me feeling disappointed. Clearly I need to change my situation so I can do the work.

    For most of us, ordinary life is very hard. There are many setbacks and difficulties. Our attention is continually being pulled involuntarily in different directions. But let’s be clear. If we did not have these problems, we would have no interest in the work and no opportunity to work.

    I remember Baba Ram Das saying: “No appointment, no disappointment.”  This is true from one point of view and it’s a valuable insight, but not one for all occasions. The first step towards the work is taken when you come to understand that the world cannot satisfy you, that for all its beauty, everything it has to offer you is insufficient. This is a great disappointment but a necessary one.

    And it must be noted that successful people, in the conventional sense, are rarely attracted to the fourth way for long. They may think that this work will help them be more successful, that it will give them additional powers for personal attainment, but it is not so.

    The difficulties of life are necessary for work. The greater difficulty is when we are no longer disappointed for ourselves because then a huge source of work energy is lost. Equanimity is much more dangerous to one’s work than struggle, although equanimity also has its place in the later stages, when it is no longer a cover for complacency or defeatism. But we have the ongoing heartbreak of disappointment on behalf of others, especially our children and young friends.

    For me, the disappointment leads to negative thoughts and moods which make it impossible to work.

    Dealing with one’s negativity about oneself is absolutely critical. Continual self-criticism is enormously destructive. In the process of learning meditation, control of these states can be developed. Essentially,  in meditation you learn to separate from thinking, to know in real time that you are perception and attention, not the thinker. This separation is dis-identification, a disengagement from the thinker and a re-engagement with voluntary attention. It is not stopping thoughts. It is a shift of identity.

    This does not come easily for me.

    There are other things you can do. Vajrayana teaches hundreds of possible antidotes. Strictly speaking, meditation is not an antidote. Placing attention on sensation can be effective. Negative thoughts need a certain amount of attention to flourish. Shifting attention elsewhere is like cutting the power cord on negative thinking. Move to an activity that diverts your attention.

    Voluntarizing negative states and self-talk can also generate surprisingly positive results; rather than compound the negativity by criticizing yourself for it, agree to go into it. Intentionally make yourself emphatically negative and see what it looks like (probably best in private). You may even laugh at yourself, which is a most wonderful antidote.

    Ultimately, the only real refuge is to be present in the present. That is where real help can be found. The past and the future have almost all the negativity in our lives. Of course, there may be exceptions such as those who experience high levels of physical pain.

    One general rule. When in a negative space, do not let yourself think about or act upon anything important, until the mood has passed. Protect what is precious to you.

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  • 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

    October 7, 2015

    How do I know when I am present?

    You don’t. Presence does. The ‘I’ that asks this question is not operational when presence is present in the present. In a state of presence, the thought of being present may or may not arise but it is always well after the fact of presence cognizing itself. This cognition is immediate, not only in the sense of having no passage of time but also in the sense of not being mediated. There is nothing between presence and itself, no other entity to see or comment on the presence of presence other than presence itself.  It is perfectly ontological…self-arising as the Karmapa would say.

    Then how can I remain present?

    You cannot. But presence may continue to be present once it has learned to recognize the process by which it becomes identified with the machine and falls out of the present and into sleep. Let us be clear. Presence is a state of dis-identification which frees attention from the domination of the head brain. But what we call the machine…the physical apparatus and ordinary mind…likely continues to harbor the momentum of sleep…the tendency to react in habitual ways to external stimuli. The sleep state is always just a hair’s-breadth away. The process of re-identification is fast, but observable in a state of presence. Presence can remain in the present by seeing and interrupting the process of identifying.

    Also, consider why you wish to be present all the time. Is it some sort of warped ambition from one of your identities? What is important is that presence is called to be present when its presence is required, when there is work to be done. Attention can be at work more continuously, but presence not so much.

    A gentle snooze, easily aroused, may actually be suitable for family visits or reunions with old school chums who are more comfortable with your customary reactive self. Of course, if you can voluntarize your sleep state on these occasions, you go to the head of the class.
    To Be Continued…

    Related Posts:

    Invocation of Presence – Aug 10, 2015

    Being Present – May 28, 2015

    Self-Remembering – Feb 24, 2015

    From Touchstones:

    Things To Do

    Presence

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