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  My teenage daughter seemed withdrawn and thoughts arose in my mind that caused turmoil.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.

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Is death a problem?

     Is death a problem?
     No, death is a natural and sacred occurrence.
     It is the way of all form to vanish.

     Only the mind makes up a story that death is bad.

     Why not question this story?
     I'm sure I will weep and feel intense agony when my loved ones die.  I will likely feel fear and great sadness when I approach my own death, and this is fine.  All of these feelings are fine, and they don't make death a problem.

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Distinguishing interpretation from actuality

               The drawing is either two faces or a candlestick, depending on how we look at it.

     Yesterday I sat in a room with a few hundred other people as Eckhart Tolle intertwined his fingers and said something like this, "Often people think that their interpretation of an event and the event itself are the same thing.  There is no such thing as a dreadful event.  All events are neutral.  'Dreadful' is an interpretation that is added to the event."  Eckhart disentangled his fingers, saying, "Waking up is when we see that the interpretation is not reality."  Eckhart held out one hand to represent the world of the mind, with its interpretations, judgments, opinions, and painful stories.  The other hand represented actuality, the event without any overlay of thought.  Presence is awareness freed from identification with mental forms.  It is who we are beneath our stories of who we are.

     Eckhart was talking with a woman with health problems who had lost her job.  "There are no dreadful events," he reiterated.  "There are only events, which can be challenging.  Challenges are real.  Problems exist only in the mind."   Eckhart's comments to this woman may sound unsympathetic, but they were the opposite. "Freedom is not dependent on pleasant conditions but on clear seeing," he said, and the woman looked as if a load had been lifted off her shoulders.

     For decades one of my worst fears has been the possibility of becoming obese, as obesity runs in my family.  Eckhart also pointed out that what we fear, we tend to attract into our lives.  When my husband and I became engaged to be married seventeen years ago, I said to him, "Promise me that you will divorce me if I ever get fat."  He smiled and replied, "Okay, I promise."

     Around the time I turned forty I went through four pregnancies in six years (three Cesarian sections and one miscarriage).  Gradually my fear of gaining weight became reality.  My sweet husband has also put on a few pounds, and thankfully he broke his promise to divorce me if I gained weight.  For years now, every day there is the relentless march of shameful thoughts in my mind for being overweight.  Every day there is a ready-made excuse to complain and hate myself and obsess over myself, etc.

     Can I distinguish between the interpretation and the actuality?  The actuality is the body weight.  According to a medical definition, I am overweight.  This actuality is neutral.  Further actualities are that I am physically fit, I am pain-free, and I enjoy walking.  I have a higher risk for weight-related health problems and I would like to lose weight.  None of these actualities produces suffering.

     The suffering comes in from the agony of thoughts of embarrassment, shame, unworthiness, and separation from others.  The suffering comes from the judgments, "This shouldn't be.  Things should be different.  I am a failure." etc.

     I am learning to distinguish reality (body weight) from the mental interpretations (this is a problem, this is unacceptable, this makes me miserable).  I am beginning to feel more at peace in my body right now just as it is.  I am in fact grateful for this body with its capacities of sight, hearing, taste, touch. I am grateful for the unfathomable mystery of this body that has been the doorway into this world for the three human beings I love most-  Chris, Mary, and Jack.

     Problems disappear when they are seen to be nothing more than mind-waves.  The actuality remains, but it is what it is, and it is non-problematic.  Even when the mind-waves reappear (habitual thoughts pop up again and again) they can be seen as innocent mind-waves rather than as a source of distress.

     This is similar to the shift that can occur when looking at a picture such as the one above; nothing actually changes, but there is a transformation in perception-  where there had been two faces there is now only a candlestick.  Actuality bathed in transparent awareness free of judgments emanates the peace that passes understanding.

(Addendum: Please see comment # 7 on this post for information about a subsequent talk where Eckhart speaks of dreadful events in the world.)

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Thinking doesn't solve problems, it creates them.

   A poem fragment I came across recently keeps coming to mind. I'd like to share it with you:

I know that stars are born

only to die

we see the light

of heavenly bodies

long since gone

this also I know:

Your light shines in me

the universe holds no terror
                                               

   (Gabriel Rosenstock, Uttering Her Name, 2009)

   Appearances disappear.  There is no getting around this fact.  Oblivion is the destiny of every appearance.  Maybe it can be stalled a bit by people who make a big splash of some kind, but we will all be equally forgotten at some not too distant point in time.  Is this fact depressing or liberating?  I've certainly experienced this fact as depressing.  From the perspective of great swaths of time, everything seems so pointless and meaningless, at times I have felt the apathy of "nothing really matters in the long run, why bother to care about things that will soon be forgotten?".

  What about the second half of the poem, "Your light shines in me/  the universe holds no terror" ?  Is there anything other than appearances disappearing and appearing and disappearing?  Is there anything other than perpetual transformation and flux?  The universe crackles with the dynamic energy of change, but is there anything that doesn't appear and disappear?

   The answer to this question is not a fact to be memorized or believed or pondered or mulled over.  Reality, the great space of formless being in which everything appears and vanishes,  is to be met directly in this moment through silence, not through mental noise.

   I dropped Jack at school this morning and did some errands.  Driving along the mind was quiet.  I once heard Jack Kornfield relate that his teacher one day picked up a cup and asked, "How should you relate to this cup?"  After a pause the teacher said, "Relate to this cup as if it is already broken."

   For me, this means drop unnecessary worries.  Accept impermanence, even celebrate it. Today I imagined the cup as already broken, I imagined a thousand years from now, just a blink of an eye in the cosmic time scale, when there will be virtually no trace whatsoever that I ever existed.  Talk about a weight lifted off!  There is exhilaration in the furnace of time that burns away every appearance.  The essentially illusory nature of separate self-hood  is revealed and there is a sense of being unbounded, undefined, undefinable...no longer in need of any self-definition.  

  This sense of not being encapsulated in a mental definition of self, of not being confined to a million beliefs, doesn't make me feel irresponsible or in any way detached from others.  On the contrary, I feel eager to meet this day and my children and whoever shows up in any moment, without all the usual barriers of mind.

   Suddenly all my so-called problems seem like just a bunch of judgments in the head, and there's nothing actually wrong with this moment.  I'll deal without whatever challenges arise, as Eckhart Tolle points out, but "problem" is just a notion in the head.  It's like the chicken - egg mix-up:  it seemed that thought solved problems, when in fact it is the other way around.  Thought creates the mind-mirage called "problem", and this mind-mirage in turn perpetuates the stream of thought.  There is this compulsion to think endlessly about so-called problems.  There can still be an appropriate and valuable use of thought to deal with practical, present concerns; but the endless agonizing over past and future is needless thought-activity that produces seeming problems where in fact there is no true problem.  I can think of many concrete examples in my own life where I was convinced there was a problem when in fact there was no problem.  My first child Chris will soon turn 16, and he was born with an X-linked genetic abnormality that caused brain damage. He is unable to walk or talk. He has needed many surgeries.  For years I was convinced this was a problem.  Yet now it is impossible for me to see any problem.  Where is the problem?  Chris is a radiant and joyful human being. He is in fact the most loving person I have ever known in my life.  There is no problem, even though thought at one time told the story that there was a problem.

    If you have examples in your own life of something that you thought was a problem, but that you then realized was not a problem, feel free to leave a comment to share your shift in perception. Whether you leave a comment or not, thanks for visiting this blog and sharing in this life adventure that we are all part of.

(photo is Hubble Telescope image of The Pleiades)

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