SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT CONSCIOUS AWARENESS

THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS

Thoughts and feelings fly through our awareness like butterflies and buzzards. They are not who we are; they are not even ours by birth. We live in a soup of all the thoughts and feelings that have ever been thought and felt, and we invite some that we've met home to meet the folks.

Then, in all innocence, we adopt and allow favourites we think might be good for us to have the run of our house???? It's not long before some of them turn out to be less than helpful and start trashing our serenity.Unfortunately by that time, we may have forgotten what they are, or even that they're there.

Thoughts and feelings have a life of their own; they are are self-propelled. They get their energy from us, but they have their own movement and purpose. With our permission -- express or tacit -- they use us to perpetuate themselves. They invite their friends into our home. It seems they somehow know where to come for a feed of energy, as if  I have a sign over my head -- "Feelings of (Inadequacy) welcome here"? It sometimes seems like it.

Have you also noticed that whenever you are near someone who has a lot of "thoughting" and feeling going on, you can pick it up? I have an expression "You could pick him up on CB in Alaska!" I'm sure you know the kind of experience I'm talking about. Some people radiate a sizzle of static that fills the air, even without them uttering a word. Dogs start growling and cats get twitchy. Some people who are in a high state of mental and emotional arousal can actually be quite scary.

Thoughts and feelings are like sparks from a bushfire. they fall around us continuously, and we catch fire. But we are rarely aware that they are not actually our thoughts or feelings. We just presume that they are, and we identify with them. Mind is far more infectious than even the most virile flu epidemic. It was the Buddha who said "We will never be free of the wheel of birth and death until we realise that we are not the do-er."

Take some time one day to watch the thought circus. First watch it inside your own being. Don't judge it, just allow yourself to be curious about it. As you come to know it and how it behaves, you'll begin to spot it going on in other people, too. We are all in the same club here.

Be still, and know the What-I-Am-Not. One of the first things you might notice is that you are not actually the thinker. Thoughts and feelings just pop out of nowhere, all by themselves. You don't think them; they just pop up. Notice though, when you attach to any one in particular, how it will start thinking you! You succumb to becoming the effect of the thoughts and feelings you focus upon.

Notice also any similarities in the kind of thoughts that arrive in your awareness. That is because the stream of thoughts we live in is filtered by our prevailing mood of feelings at the time. Our "mood" admits mostly thoughts that fit and reinforce that mood. Become aware of that. Notice how you identify and become one with them. It happens with awesome speed -- less than the blink of an eye.

Relax, and watch.

Sooner (or later) the stream of thoughts will begin to slow down. When they do, you will become aware that there are minute gaps of no-thought between each thought. Relax. Let the traffic slow even more. Look in to those gaps of no-thought between each thought. Possibly for the first time in your life, pay more notice to the gaps than to the thoughts. When one gap ends,  skip to the next gap. Enjoy a holiday from being caught on thoughts.

FOCUS ------- REALITY

The more time we spend in the gaps of no-thought than on the thoughts themselves, our experience of life begins to transform. Why is that? There's a Law of Transformation that goes something like this -- When we change what we focus our attention upon, we change our experience. When we change our experience, we change our life. I have noticed that, when I'm feeling less than happy with life, there's often a problem with the type of thoughts I'm giving most of my attention to. If that is the case, a re- balance is just a simple click "away".

The "click" I'm referring to is the one that happens when we "get" an optical illusion. We're all familiar with those clever optical tricks where you first see one image, then there is a "click" when you suddenly see something else quite different in the same picture. Once we get the illusion, we can then play with clicking back and forth between the two realities.

In order for you to get some real experience and practice in shifting focus, here are two quick exercises you could try now. Firstly, look at an object reasonably close to you. Got one? Good. Take in its shape, size, colour, texture, and anything else that comes to your attention. Now without turning your head away, just shift your focus to the wider background behind and surrounding what you were looking at. Notice the details of that bigger picture. Note how very different they are from the foreground object. Notice how your perceptions of the first object subtly change when it becomes just a part of the bigger picture. Now shift your focus back and forth between the two.... foreground ..... background ..... close-up ..... wide-angle. . Keep on doing that for a while, and do it as often as you think to wherever you are. .... close-up ..... wide-angle. Besides being a very good exercise for the eye muscles, it begins a healthy routine for your "seeing" muscles, too.

Secondly, imagine a very large picture window in front of you, looking out over your favourite panorama. Got that? Now a bird outside flies by and leaves a small dot of excrement on the outside surface of the otherwise pristine window. Got it? Good. Now, what do you see? Bird poo, right? All of a sudden, you no longer see the panorama. Your attention has zoomed in from a grand vista to a tiny splodge of excrement. The excrement now occupies 100% of your attention.

This is the fixation of the human mind (just one of many fixations). Mind loves to zoom in on the Poo. Mind loves to home in on some part of  reality in line with its current thinking, at the expense of seeing the whole of it. Mind obsesses with What-Ain't and loses sight of a much grander What-Is.  It dwells on a narrow spectrum of Content and ignores the whole Context.

You can examine the poo, OR you can take in the panorama, but in the mind you cannot do both at once. If you want to see both, you do have to re-learn to let go of fixations with the poo and "click"to the panorama. You can switch your attention back and forth -- very rapidly if you want to. But eventually, if you persevere with remembering to check out the wider picture, you will just unbend, unwind and flex your tired and spasmed fixations, and take in the Whole Picture, knowing that whatever had you hooked a moment ago was just a minute part of the far richer, more abundant, whole picture

Out of sheer habit, mind will focus on the poo and forget the panorama. This is how you break the habit -- simply remember there is a panorama available, unexplored possibility waiting to be noticed and enjoyed in all its richness and splendour by wide-open conscious awareness. Life will remind you. Just Remember. Step back. Zoom out, and allow the grandness to reveal itself to you. Let it come to you.

Suffering can be seen as evidence of misplaced attention. Mind will lock onto a thought or feeling, and ignore the consciousness in which it arose. That is what minds do. We get the evidence of thought and feeling, but we miss getting to know the level of consciousness that attracts the experiences we're having. And that prevents us from learning. When that happens we lose all sense of perspective. After too much of it, we become chronically inappropriate to the reality of the situation. We fall out of a state of grace and into a state of Ego.

There is something compulsive about Ego. Ego demands to be the centre of attention. Ego is on a trip of Self-Importance. Ego says "I am far too special to feel this unimportant!!" Ego claims to be the centre of the universe, around which the rest of all God's creation must revolve once every 24 hours. The Ego creates God in its own image. How's that for Original Sin? Ego is a jealous god, demanding to be worshipped exclusively and constantly, and given attention totally. This is why ego gets hurt in the presence of a Master.

A Master is one who is simply adept at getting his ego out of the way. That skill enables him/her to look right through and beyond another's ego to the whole, grand state of being around it. Ego then gets miffed because it demands his whole attention -- "Hey!! Look at me! I'm the centre of the world!"  It is a lie. Ego is not the centre of anything. Neither are you; neither am I. A Centre exists only in a reality that believes in boundaries and outer limits -- ergo, Ego. Inside a frame, there is a centre. When there is no frame, there is no centre.

Free of ego, you and I are something much more than that. We are the foreground AND the entire setting. We are the content AND the context. We are the Consciousness that holds all the thoughts and feelings that we choose to explore for a while. The quality of that Conscious Awareness depends on what we give our attention to.

And that is always OUR choice.

Why do we choose to suffer? To see what it feels like, that's all. When we've had enough......... Click. Click your fingers and shift your focus.