The essence of this practice is to actually experience awareness of reality. Merely thinking about the possibility is not different from thinking about anything else.
A person may have had such experiences accidentally, or even induced by certain drugs. This practice is about experiencing awareness intentionally. Accidents or "gifts" of awareness are fine, but I need to be able to access awareness of reality when I wish. How is this to be done? I have to learn to pay attention to awareness of reality. This is a dexterity that can be learned. You will confirm that for yourself when you actually learn it. An effort is required, not a physical effort but an effort of attention. How much effort does it take to intentionally pay attention to something? Not much, if you wish to do so. But one has to be clear what it is that one is attending to.
One receives instructions of how to pay attention to awareness, and then one tries to follow them.
I think that it is helpful to recognize that this is a question of one's own consciousness and one's own present experience. I am not trying to be aware of something that exists elsewhere or that is known only to experts. I am not trying to be aware of some theoretical description or of some cultural narrative that I have taken for granted all my life. I wish to experience impartial awareness of my own present reality. We can shorten that to "impartial awareness of now."
I think that "now" is easier to understand than "impartial." For example, suppose that I now put my hand in my pocket. I think of doing it, I intend it, maybe visualize it, and now I do it. I write now. My hands move over this keyboard like squirrels busy on some errand. I wish to be aware of now. A lot of different processes are going on in my experience now. It is easiest to focus on some physical act or happening, a present happening. Breathing is good, you are always breathing, although one pauses in this process usually, because we don't need that much oxygen unless we are really exerting ourselves. Or one can focus on any other physical action, movement, gesture, posture, facial expression, tone of voice, as Mr. Nyland recommended, maybe something that you do intentionally as a focus for trying to experience awareness. You have to be aware of your behavior simultaneous with its taking place. That is the meaning of now. No description, no criticism. It doesn't matter whether your thoughts continue to describe and criticize, as they do habitually. What you are trying to do, if you follow this instruction, is to put your attention on some physical behavior now, on simultaneous awareness of that behavior. Your thoughts do not need your attention at the moment. They can play by themselves.
We are not very familiar with trying to intentionally direct our attention. You will find that your attention wanders. Gently bring it back. Do this as long as you wish. This is just for you. It is no one else's business.
If you are able to direct your attention onto some physical behavior of yours, so that you are aware of that behavior simultaneously, you have learned to pay attention to simultaneous awareness of reality. If you are really able to do this, you will also experience impartiality.
One must learn the flavor of impartiality by experience. It is not detachment. Detachment is an illusion. Everything is attached to everything. Our experience is whole. Impartiality is awareness of the whole of our experience, at a given moment or time. This is impossible for our thought, obviously. As Gurdjieff might have said, it is like trying to jump over your own knees. If you are thinking about anything, you are not thinking about something else. But reality includes everything that can be thought about, and also that which is experienced but cannot be grasped by thought. Our thought cannot be aware of reality, but even the concept of impartial awareness is difficult.
Each person really has to learn this for oneself by one's own practice. Mr. Nyland tried to show us the way, of course, as I am trying to show you the way. Some of his hints didn't seem to be very helpful to me, at least in the short run. In some forms of Zen Buddhism, people meditate on insoluble verbal problems, called koans. Confrontation of our consciousness with its intolerable limitations can result in an experience of awareness. Impartial and simultaneous awareness of reality is possible for a person. I have experienced this many, many times and so can you.
"This is for all the lonely people,
Thinkin' that life has passed them by:
Don't give up until you drink from a silver cup,
Don't give up until you try."
Mr. Nyland used to explain that impartiality may be understood as "no liking or disliking," and also that it represents freedom of awareness from feeling, as simultaneity represents freedom from thought. I really didn't find either of these hints very helpful, despite making every effort to utilize them. However, he did offer another kind of hint that I did find very useful, at a definite point. This hint related to the concept of "God." I was inoculated against this concept by various experiences in my youth, so that any mention of the word "God" constituted a verbal signal to me which might be translated as "ignore the following." Incidentally, I would like to express the opinion that whoever cooked up the notion that God is a person should suffer the same fate as whoever cooked up the notion that a corporation is a person. Whatever horrible punishment that might be, it would be accompanied by a chorus of victims of these ideas, screaming: "Idiot! Idiot!"
Regardless of all preconceptions, God, the consciousness and creator of all that is, is impartial toward me and toward my consciousness, toward this little one being of all the immense sacred mystery that is reality. God isn't concerned about the details of my experience. He (God isn't a person, but he is personal, for all persons) actually knows it all, the whole trip. He isn't impressed or repelled. He views me with unconditional positive regard, as he views all his creation. At a certain point, the realization that impartiality is equivalent to awareness of God's presence helped me to understand impartiality. You know that God is omnipresent by definition, don't you? God is present now. Wake up.
No comments:
Post a Comment