A bird does not sing because it has an answer.

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.

Chinese proverb







I used to feel that a moment free from thought had no particular value. I used to feel that thinking was a better way to spend time than not thinking. I used to wallpaper every moment with a million ruminations.

Thinking felt productive, like it was getting me somewhere, finding answers, figuring life out. A blank mind, free of thought, was a wasted moment. It was zoning out, vegging out, goofing off, being frivolous. Thought was the vehicle to wisdom, understanding, and insight.

I was bound and determined to think-my-way to happiness.

And every thought took me away from the realm of no-thought that is happiness itself.


It has also been a surprise to discover that alert no-thought is actually more intelligent than thought. The space of no-thought is the source of any intelligence that shows up in thought. The no-thought that is "upstream" of thought is the source of creativity and wisdom.

While thought can be a beautiful and powerful tool, a lot of thought is unnecessary and destructive. Who doesn't have a merciless voice of internalized self-criticism? Or, even worse, a secret voice of thought that whispers hopes of personal specialness? Self-hatred and narcissism are two sides of a coin that have one thing in common: me, me, me. Which is the point of the bulk of thought: to conjure and perpetuate this huge fiction of separate me-hood. Thought builds up an imagined sense of me that must be constantly maintained and expanded. It is exhausting. It is a parasite draining life energy.

The me-image is fragile and flimsy and insecure by nature, as any image is a frail and evanescent thing. An image (especially the self-image) has a bottomless craving for attention, for without attention, where is the image? Poof! It is gone that easily.



These days there is a treasuring of the space of no-thought, whether thoughts are present or not. In the morning when consciousness opens its eyes on a new day, it savors the glint of silence between thoughts. So many of the thoughts that arise are recognized as unimportant, or as luring conscious attention towards hooking into some new drama of suffering, stirring up a new pot of pain.  Sometimes the unnecessary suffering cooked up by thought-stories is caught early on and the drama is side-stepped, nipped in the bud.  Other times I'm swept into the waking dream of thought lock-stock-and-barrel and ride out the storm.  Either way, all the while the space of no-thought gleams with fathomless presence. Attention opens from the thoughts to the space of awareness in which the thoughts occur. Such freedom here now in this space!

~
Gratitude for photo of Mourning Dove available at this link:
http://www.bird-friends.com/pics/MourningDove/MourningDove3LR.jpg

The thermodynamics of attention

I am in a dark cave holding a flashlight.  The beam of the flashlight is the circumference of my reality.

What moves the beam of attention?  What are the thermodynamics of the flow of conscious awareness?

"Most people give their attention to what they don't like.  Put your attention on what you love."  (Adyashanti)

Recently I read an essay by David Foster Wallace called This Is Water that keeps coming back to mind.  I had never heard of Wallace, but here is a one sentence description of him (written by David Lipsky):

"He published a thousand-page novel, received the only award you get in the nation for being a genius, wrote essays providing the best feel anywhere of what it means to be alive now, accepted a special chair to teach writing at a college in California, married, published another book, and hanged himself at age forty-six."*

Explaining his struggle with depression, at one point Wallace said, "I think I had lived an incredibly American life. That, 'Boy, if I could just achieve X and Y and Z, everything would be OK.' "

The essay by David Foster Wallace was the commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College in Ohio in 2005, three years before his suicide in 2008.  It's one of the most lucid, honest, and penetrating essays I have ever read. One reviewer said that the essay is "like six Eckhart Tolle books rolled into one."

Here are some excerpts from Wallace's essay (with slight paraphrase).

"There is a blind certainty, a closed-mindedness that's like an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up."

 "A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded."

 "It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your head."

"But it is possible to be conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to...If you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.  Think of the old cliche about the mind being 'an excellent servant but a terrible master.' "

"I submit that the real value of education is supposed to be about:  How to keep from going through life a slave to your head."

"Our own present culture has yielded the freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation."

"But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.  The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness."

"The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the 'rat race'- the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing."

"Real value has everything to do with simple awareness- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us."

Wallace describes a routine trip to the grocery store to illustrate in concrete terms what he is talking about.

Freedom of attention.  This makes me wonder about the thermodynamics of attention.  Thermodynamics is about the flow of energy, and attention is a kind of energy, for which we have not yet discerned the underlying dynamics.

What are the thermodynamics of attention?  Is there a magnetic pull toward clarity?  An attractive force towards truth?  A gravitational tug of ego?  An electromagnetic force field of love?  More and more there is a noticing of the flow of attention- what captivates it- what frees it. What does it mean for awareness to be aware of its own presence?  Life becomes an adventure in attention, as David Foster Wallace suggests.



(David Foster Wallace's commencement speech is highly recommended and can be read at this link:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words)

(* quote about Wallace is from  Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky, p. xv and p. 66)

(photo is from: http://zombiestories.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/light-beam.jpg)

~

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:

http://radianceofbeing.blogspot.com/

~

The fulcrum of attention

     The last few days, like many days, have been rocky.  My husband planted a rose bush a few inches from a brick wall and this triggered some discussion.  My teenage daughter seemed withdrawn and thoughts arose in my mind that caused turmoil. There are hundreds of lay-offs at the institution I work at due to downsizing, and I may lose my job.  You know the drill, from the mundane stressors to occasional intense angst that seems to come out of nowhere and have no cause,  life rolls on.  And beyond the tiny and sometimes larger travails of this individual life, there is the massive suffering and also joys of billions of people and animals on this planet.

      This morning I read a stunning essay on 'Sailor' Bob Adamson's website.  http://members.iinet.net.au/~adamson7/intro.html

      Bob helps me to see that there are basically waves and the space in which those waves occur.  Attention is usually riveted by the waves, but it is possible for attention to shift and become conscious of the space in which the waves occur.

      Waves, or vibrations, or patterns of energy, comprise everything that we are capable of detecting.  Thoughts, feelings, sensations, all physical and mental objects, are basically transient energy waves that appear and subside in the space of awareness.

      The noisy waves of thought and emotion and sensation are a magnet for attention.  Yet there is always the possibility of shifting attention to notice the space in which the waves occur.  Why bother?  Because this space in which everything occurs is the deeper self.  It is the space of present awareness.  Some might call it the no-self...the words don't matter.  The reality that the words point to is what matters.

      I'm not just my story, I'm the silent awareness that knows the story and without which there would be no story.  I'm the silent awareness that knows the story but is not itself a story.

      The story is the dream-like surface of life, and I do the best I can on this level, but remain in touch with what matters most: the deeper dimension of being, which is to say, the space in which the story occurs.

      The space and the waves are no more different than water and ice-cubes.

     Consciousness and the objects of consciousness are in no way separate. Awareness and the arisings in awareness are an indivisible whole.  They cannot be separated.  They form a seamless continuity.  Yet within this whole, it is possible to shift the accent of awareness from the objects to the aware space in which the objects occur.  Form and formlessness are one, as the Heart Sutra says.  We tend to be lost in form, but it is possible to become conscious of formlessness.  This is key.

      The space of now is where the waves called past and future thoughts appear.  It is the intersection of time and eternity, the intersection of the dream and reality, the intersection of ego and essence.  It is the fulcrum where attention can shift from content to space.  This is the shift from powerlessness to power.

     Most of my life I have been primarily aware of  the objects of consciousness, while I have overlooked the presence of consciousness itself.

      I have been lost in content and I have ignored (been ignorant of) the space in which the content occurs.  I have been focused on things and I have discounted the space of  no-thing that makes everything possible.  I have lived in the mind (thought) and been oblivious of the presence of awareness in which thought occurs.

      No-thing, space, awareness, consciousness, being, stillness, silence, emptiness, life, mystery, love, essence, Self, now, presence, freedom, openness, spirit, formlessness- all these words are synonyms that point to the immediacy of awake space that is the medium in which everything exists.  It is the dimension of eternity which is the substratum of all appearances.  It is the dimension of the unborn in which the born exists.

      Attention is shifting from the wave to the space in which the wave occurs.  Noticing is shifting from "me and my life" to the no-me space of being that is my deeper self.

      There is less interest in becoming and more interest in being.

      This shift in attention feels like new eyes are opening in me, quiet eyes that see what is without needing to comment on it.  Quiet eyes that can simultaneously sense forms and the space of emptiness from which all forms emerge.

      The exhausting and delusory effort to improve on the perfection of what is subsides in this moment.

      There is a sense of being one with the unfolding  mystery, of joining in the creative energy of the universe in its ceaseless expression of the good.  This is a radically different way to live than the ego stance of being a special-someone who is going to manipulate things toward correcting a mentally defined deficiency.

      Einstein said that no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.  The level of consciousness called thought  has created the problems in the world today.  The mind has created the problems and only awareness can solve them, for awareness is a higher level of intelligence than thought.

      In my own experience it is the level of awareness and not the level of thought that solves problems like a rose bush planted close to a brick wall,  my relationship with my daughter, and the possibility of job loss.

      It is from this deeper level of consciousness that true solutions can be found for individual and collective problems.   Attention shifts to this level of consciousness easily when space is noticed rather than objects.  It is possible for anyone to shift the fulcrum of attention from thought to awareness.   See Bob's essay for a very clear description of this shift.

      Thank you for being in this space.

~