A Window is Where the Wall is Absent

The life impulse to express and to connect arises in me and in all of us. This blog is a celebration of these life impulses. Please feel free to join in the conversation or to just visit. There is a Family Photo Album beneath the posts so you can "meet" my family and I. Welcome!

Showing posts with label koans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label koans. Show all posts

Monday, May 31, 2010

Pointers point




Pointers
point
attention

out of the mind
into free fall.

Pointers are a very different use of language from the normal usage.

Pointers point outside of thought, not further into it.

Pointers are words that lead to freedom from words. 

A pointer that I have found to be very helpful is the question:  Where is my attention right now?

The capacity to "see" the mind and notice what it is attending to is an astounding capacity that tends to be underused.  When this question/pointer arises ( "Where is my attention right now?") and I'm honest with myself, the answer is often:  My attention is fixated primarily on the thoughts in my head.  My attention is on thoughts of me-and-my-life and on thoughts of me-and-what-will-happen-to-me. My attention is lost in ruminations about past and future.

Surprisingly, it can be a joy to see this stuckness of attention on the "me".  Watching the mind-shows called "past and future" and "me"  is so much better than being in them. It becomes increasingly obvious that attention, through conditioning and habit, tends to gravitate again and again back to past and future thoughts about this image called "me".  Through this gravitational pull of habit, attention repeatedly becomes lost in the trance of thought.  It's so freeing just to see this dynamic of attention as it occurs!

Pointers break the trance.

They redirect attention.

Another pointer is the question:  What gives rise to the thought 'I am' ?

Resting in this question, "What gives rise to the thought 'I am' ?"... can take awareness into a felt sense of the aliveness that gives rise to the thought 'I am.' 

Both Bob Adamson and Eckhart Tolle, and many others, have said-  let the pointer do its job.  Let the pointer take awareness into the silence.

Nisargadatta had one pointer from his teacher and he spent every waking moment with this pointer for three years, and the shackle of the mind fell off.

Bob Adamson has said that staying with one single pointer is all that is needed to fully realize freedom.  There are many powerful pointers, he gave one example of such a pointer:

What is wrong with this moment
unless you think about it?

This is also the title of Bob's first book.  Every time I ask the question, "What's wrong with right now?" and pause...the mind-bubble pops.  Every time I ask the question, "What's wrong with right now?" and pause...there is the quiet shock of  THIS-ness, where absolutely nothing is wrong. Awareness jumps off the diving board from mind to no-mind.  Awareness leaps from the finger pointing at the moon to the moon itself. Awareness notices what's closer than any word or thought.

Today there is a wealth and explosion of beautiful pointers, like a huge flock of magnificent birds, flying across the internet and in many books.  I am so grateful!  My intention is to go deeply into a small number of pointers, such as the ones mentioned in this post, and to let them clear the mental suffering as it arises.  Whenever any suffering is undone, the burden is less for all.

Thank you to all my friends on the blogosphere who have shared liberating pointers.  The pointer is similar to  a koan or paradox that bursts the boundaries of the mind. 

If you have some favorite pointers, please feel free to share them in a comment.

There are so many great blogs out there, and I will mention one in this context because nearly every post is titled "Pointers." If you haven't had the pleasure of checking out "Radiance of Being" (Rodney Stevens), you may want to click on this link:

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