Attention - grabbed, placed, or moved

Attention may be considered roughly as conscious awareness of something.

Normally, our attention flits around involuntarily because it is grabbed by a series of things. 

And generally grabbed by something outside - or even inside - the body due to incoming sensations. These sensations are due to energy of some kind, reflected or generated from things. This energy impinges on our sensors or sense organs. Attention grabbing may also be considered as attention triggering by sensations.

Attention can be placed on something inside or outside the body at will.

Some level of subtler thinking is involved, e.g., a multi-step process or a goal. As simple as getting up from a chair to answer a doorbell, to as complicated as completing a degree course.

Attention is generally a mix of being grabbed and being placed at will.

Attention seems to be discontinuous, moving from object to object. But awareness may be conscious - say at a particular level, sub-conscious - "below" that level, or super-conscious - "above" that level.

If attention then moves across these three levels, it seems sensible to imagine attention may be of sub-conscious or super-conscious awareness when it is not at a conscious level. If so, instead of discontinuous attention - attention applied for a while, left hanging or paused for another while, and then applied again to the same level - it is actually continuous, albeit across different levels. But that part or ability of attention which differentiates normal from sub- consciousness, and normal from super- consciousness, is missing. Missing to such an extent that it seems attention itself is missing.

Meditation by resting attention on something ungrabbable such as an infinite object results in expansion of awareness across the three levels. Per Daaji, this expands the boundaries of the conscious level of attention into the super-conscious and sub-conscious areas, thus reducing them a little.

Daaji has also raised the interesting idea that when one's attention goes further into the super-conscious, the present conscious level may become the subconscious.

Practically, meditation on something infinite with few to zero physical features improves one's ability to place one's attention on dry, abstract concepts.

In sum, attention keeps shifting from object to object, not only at the same level, but also across levels. Much of the time, the shift is involuntary - attention is grabbed. But one can also train one's attention to stay where one wants or move it around at will.

Everybody meditates every day

Meditation = 2.5 minutes of effort-less attention.

12x12 kShaNa or seconds.
~Sw. Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

Given that, everyone meditates every day. E.g., a good cup of hot coffee drunk with relaxed enjoyment and attention throughout is also a meditation.

So what's the difference in spiritual meditation?

1. Object of meditation is inward, not outward

2. It is infinite

3. It is transformative

E.g., 1) Heartfulness meditation is on the heart and 

on the source of all life energy/prāṇa within;

2) pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam eva avaśiṣyate -

infinity taken from infinity leaves infinity;

3) a new meditative state is gifted daily.

[Spiritual] Meditation is effortless attention on an infinite object.
~Daaji in The Heartfulness Way

So practising meditation itself is not the problem.

Everyone already does that every day. 

But do so inadvertently.

Not systematically.

Meditation by giving attention
a) in a different, unfamiliar, direction, and
b) to a different, unfamiliar, object of meditation?

That is new and needs practice.

When the object is infinite,

attention or simple awareness also morphs:
from thinking to
 feeling to 
 becoming to 
 being and 
 beyond.
~Daaji

Practice vs. knowing

Why practice is necessary

Not practising is like only reading and thinking you know everything about a place without actually living there.

When you live somewhere for years on end, you are changed physically and emotionally by the experience. If nothing else, your body picks up the microorganisms there and your mind the emotional microbiases there.

Simple examples - few ad hoardings in Chennai city limits compared to Bangalore. Or cleaner, neater standup cafes in Bangalore vs Chennai. Or incessant though possibly unconscious emphasis on an idealized physique in Southern California vs. Arkansas. Greater body-orientedness in the US vs. greater intellect-orientedness - especially memory-orientedness - in India.

Intellectual understanding is one thing. The physical and emotional implications of practice are very different.

It is also simple logic. If you want to pay attention inward, you must turn your attention inward. If you say that I know everything that will happen at the personal and cosmological levels based solely on someone else's experience, you don't really know.

A simple, but profound, example: can you hold in mind - simultaneously - views of all the sides of a table?

Such an experience is normally impossible, one keeps bringing memories of different sides into awareness sequentially. Or projecting symmetrical views of the visible sides onto the sides non-visible.

Similarly, inward experiences should not be, and are not,  like your outward experiences after some point. If they are, then you are not going beyond memories (admittedly internal) to fresh, dynamic, and continuing inner experiences.

Holding on to memories and chewing their cud while dealing with incoming sensations is like simultaneously accelerating and braking a vehicle.

Here your mental system is the vehicle. Just as the physical vehicle is unable to respond properly given opposing inputs, your mental or inner system is also unable to respond naturally and effortlessly when the memory circuit drains off energy all the time.

Going inward requires:

1. a high degree of acceptance - this I am,
2.  a high degree of trust - this I need not be, 
3. a high degree of courage or an indomitable will - anything other humans have done, I also can and will do,
4. a certain open-mindedness - I don't know now, and
5. a certain willingness to change - but I can learn and I will learn.

(Other things such as Nature helping your inward evolution can only be understood through experience.)

There is no need for un-reasoning belief. But there is also no need for un-relenting disbelief in one's own experiences. That is another subconscious conditioning or brainwashing. And that leads to a lack of desire to practise or experience at all. After all, why practise if I believe that I won't get believable / pleasurable / useful experiences?

Only practice and waiting patiently to understand its results at all levels will be helpful for self-validation. (Yes, there are caveats, but don't waste time in quibbling or, more importantly, hanging on to eternal disbelief.) Results also manifest and/or stabilise over time at the beginning. Then they settle down faster. Again, this needs to be experienced, not understood intellectually.

Most people prefer to listen or read, perhaps think and/or discuss, but not to practise. They are stuck at the first step or second step of this trio:

1. śravaṇa, listening or reading,
2. manana, mental/intellectual contemplation to fit understanding from śravaṇa into existing conceptual frameworks or into an entirely new one altogether, and
3. nididhyāsana, having the actual inner experience or im-perience corresponding to śravaṇa and manana.

Move on to the third stage to get the complete experience. Do note that this is needed for each condition and each stage.

Lakshman Joo wrote that in Kashmir Shaivism, just experience is not enough. Intellectual understanding is also needed to hang on to spiritual conditions and places.

Similarly, Babuji wrote that gurus who have both theoretical understanding and varied practical experience are the best. They can guide their students better than gurus with only theoretical understanding or only practical experience.

Learning to live

In a way, what we have to learn in life is very simple.

Learn to make the use of all our physical and mental instruments natural and effort-less, not forced and strenuous.

Use the mind as needed, not as habituated. And let it rest when not in use. Not spinning fruitlessly, chewing up energy.

Use the heart for instant answers, but understand that the heart only returns a yes or no. If silent and peaceful -  yes. If disturbed or heavy - no.

Sync that with reasoning. Think and analyse and understand till the mind-intellect  is content and at peace, then all your inner instruments are working naturally and optimally.

Nutrition is another subject with many fiddly balancing details, but essentially, give the body the nutrients it needs and it will work naturally and effort-less-ly, letting your heart and mind evolve as they should.

Mens sana in corpore sano covers it well.

A rare confluence - from inner peace to world peace

A huge tidal wave is building up in spirituality this year.

Some 300 spiritual organisations are coming together in a rare confluence at Kanha Shanti Vanam next week - 14-17 March 2024 - for integrating their efforts at the spiritual evolution of humanity. Details at
https://www.globalspiritualitymahotsav.org

Daaji, the Guide of Heartfulness - the hosting organisation, is both a visionary as well as highly detail-oriented. Should you wish to really delve into spirituality, there is no better guide to support your inward journey.

He is also making jivanmukti a reality. Not siddhi or superhero aspects, but evolving - or devolving - from animal man to humane man and beyond. Shifting from thinking, worrying, and praying to remove life's problems to handling any problem thrown at you with courage and confidence, in your own Self within.

Daaji is not merely a paarasmaNi - a philosopher's stone - of spirituality, but someone who makes others into paarasmaNis. That idea, and its scope, is itself awe-inspiring, but the speed and systematic way he is making it happen is astounding.

His project and organisation are far beyond outmoded parochialism and religion. It is a true revolution in sadhana because the onus and the controls are entirely in the hands, mind, and heart of the practitioner. But the real support is also entirely inner so you have to experience and learn something totally different - a communication language devoid of words and images. Something to be experienced, not explained.

Becoming conscious of your inner self is not trivial, but because it only involves a change in mental priority, neither is it difficult. If anything, the difficulty lies in letting go of familiar complexities to reach unfamiliar, though elegant, simplicity.

But the elegance will reveal itself only when you relinquish more and more. Not consciously, merely by not recreating your conditioning when its past residues slough away naturally - through your daily sadhana.

If you are seriously practising a spiritual method, you don't have to change anything. Just share your peace and joy with others - anonymously. Mentally.

But if you, like many human beings, have only wondered about mystics and mystical experiences, now is the time to start practising.

Or to renew your practice, enthusiastically, if you are doing so desultorily.

Practise - not to achieve those exalted states, but to reveal their existence and wonder at the eternal beauty, peace, and joy within.

Within yourself.

Optimal vs habitual

It is possible to get to a state of minimum or optimal energy usage of one's brain and mind for emotional activities.

Emotional activities create and sustain saṁskāras - emotional residues, or heaviness or grossness in our mind and consciousness.

They in turn make it difficult to act (think, speak, do) lightly and freely. In one way, it's like walking carrying two heavy suitcases. In another way, it's like walking along a path and constantly stepping off into a side track to investigate something related to that encountered on the path. Imagine doing this every few steps!

Primarily, physical or brain strain - excessive energy use, worry, etc. - comes from always, or even mostly, thinking, talking, and doing with others.

Especially comparing, analysing, judging - yourself with/against others, others with/against others.

Or relationships with others - making, breaking, changing, maintaining, quantifying, categorising, and so on.

Please note that others are necessary, and so are relationships with them.

I see all emotional activities as resulting from paying too much attention outward, and know from experience that that can be reduced using some simple techniques or tools.

There is, for example, an outward way and an inward way of dealing with others.

One simple technique from the set is to hand over all the things causing worry and strain to someone, or something, inside you, which can, wants to, and does, support you.

Then you simply sit back (mentally), relax, and enjoy your life like a child or a baby!

Remember, though, that a baby learns, continuously, effort-less-ly, naturally.

But reaching this stage takes time and some degree of commitment to this handover.

Total commitment is called blind faith. It develops from an initial trust, experimentation and observation, seeing first if life can work at all with that handover, and then, whether it continues to work. If it does, trust becomes belief. Then, even in crises, if the handover stays, naturally, belief can become faith.

This doesn't mean zero brain or mind use. Just effective use, as needed than as habituated.

One still learns from the inspiration and observation of how situations work out with the insider in charge.

Planning and whatever else I learned about intellectual work must still occur.

Like implementing a plan, monitoring its progress, post-mortem analysis, and so on.

This tool is a continuous process, though mentally its usage range (or natural sequence) is never, seldom, occasional, frequent, constant.

There will still be times when I yank back emotional "control" due to habit or lack of trust or desire for the rush of energy from anger or other negative emotions. Or any other reason.

This is normal, and expected, as one moves from never to constant.

I simply hand over agency inward again, once I get back to a stable mental state.

Techniques from the Heartfulness/Sahaj Marg system are cyclical, and interconnected.

Thus, daily meditation helps in going deeper or subtler, and so cleaning away deeper or subtler saṁskāras.

Daily cleaning helps in meditating daily better - faster, longer, subtler - by removing surface emotions and emotional thoughts. And, daily meditation brings up more and more things to the surface.

Daily prayer helps in connecting inward, turning from outward. To, or with, that which is already within myself.

Then, I can detach myself better from outward situations for better understanding. 

I can also meditate and clean wherever I am. And whenever I want or need to, as well.

Remembrance, the first technique, should arise naturally from the daily core practice elements.

Those three are critical.

Just do it - daily.

Then add AEIOU, etc. after each element.

And simply relax, just be.

Whatever thoughts and ideas you need will come up.

The Heartfulness techniques for practitioners are not new or original. They are based on the oral tradition of Raja Yoga, and even more ancient sources, possibly the Ṝg saṁhitā, and definitely the Upaniṣads as well as the Bhagavad Gīta.

But transmission by the Guide? The scalability and real support for millions? That is something else altogether! But it must be experienced, not just talked or thought about.

Dependence and rubber duckies

(Very much an informal blog post. Much background knowledge and troubles are assumed.)

Depending or clinging mentally to anyone other than one's inner Master in one's heart is like a drowning person trying to stay afloat using a rubber ducky in a stormy ocean. Both you and the ducky will go down. But the ducky may still come up after you drown! So it can float and survive alone in stormy seas, but it is not made to help others through emotional or physical turbulence.

(A preceptor should ideally help abhyasis to help themselves emotionally by being a good listener. Let them talk it out, calm down, and think for themselves. Paraphrasing may be helpful. Still, sittings are much more effective than conversations because deeper level stuff blocking effective use of one's intellect and will is removed. And only one's own understanding, motivation, and decisiveness are truly helpful.)

Clinginess to others is from tamas overriding sattva.

Sittings, again, and meditations help increase sattva. Even a few seconds of meditation can change the proportion of sattva-rajas-tamas.

Watch your own behaviour and then intervene spiritually in your life through cleaning, meditation, and prayer. Still try for ahimsa at thought-talk-act levels.

Prayer is best done before an event.
After, cleaning and meditation.
During, remembrance.

You have tremendous energies. Direct all of them towards the inner Master by being dependent mentally only on him and simultaneously being independent of all others. Accept from them and give to them, yes, but don't depend on them emotionally or spiritually.

Reserve dependence only for the inner Master. He is the only rubber ducky that can grow or shrink as needed for you to stay afloat through the wildest storms!