Week #6 (5/19/10)

If you can get a sense of your sense-of-self in this moment, you will have direct information regarding the source of any feelings of anxiety, fear, lack or incompleteness ("not-enoughness"), frustration, anger, etc. If you pay very close attention to this sense-of-self feeling, you will sense the urge to do something or be something/someone. All of these feelings and motivations come from our personal sense-of-self. They can all be seen while sitting quietly, focusing with equanimity on the sensation of breath or inner body energy.

If focus on breath is allowed to turn toward and identify with these thoughts, feelings and motivations, the personal sense-of-self is re-born. But if focus remains on breath, with equanimity, the sense of impersonal Awareness - Being - is felt and directly experienced. Focused in the sense of impersonal Awareness, all the thought structures that previously defined who and what we are - our personal sense-of-self - are seen to be what they really are: temporary phenomena, arising and dissolving away in constant Awareness. In fact, the personal sense-of-self is Awareness, Oneness, Wholeness, appearing as a personal sense-of-self!

Your practice for this week is to allow that sense of impersonal Awareness to permeate your daily routine. During a single breath, allow yourself to shift your focus away from thought and the resulting personal sense-of-self to the sense of already present, impersonal Awareness.

"Yet Natural Being is such an ordinary and gentle constant. When it is seen it is. When it is avoided it is. It requires no effort and demands no standards. Being timeless there is no path to tread, no debt to pay. When this is heard and confusion collapses, when the contraction of struggling to get something falls away and the vibrant energy of being aliveness becomes apparent, something else is seen, very naturally of course, because it is already all that is." - Tony Parsons

Week #5 (5/12/10)

Focusing in thought results in a sense-of-self because there is identification with the thought. Focusing with equanimity on sensation inside the body, e.g., on the sensation of breath, results in a sensing of awareness - of Being. 

Sitting quietly, attention focused on breath, thoughts and/or feelings arise and are "seen" with equanimity - there is no movement to "scratch the itch." It is seen that this thought, if not given a second thought (which results in identification and a sense-of-self by making a story of "me" in relation to the initial thought) simply dissolves back into the awareness from whence it arose. Thoughts and feelings are seen to arise and fall away, but the sense of awareness remains. The separate-seeming sense-of-self falls away and the sense of awareness remains - aliveness, awareness, Being.

When you return focus to breath - just this breath - during the day, in the midst of your daily routine, the sense of awareness comes into focus and the incomplete sense-of-self falls away... just for an instant... just to remind you that your real "identity" is the alive awareness, being, and you don't have to "scratch the itch" in that moment - you don't have to identify with a habitual, sense-of-self reaction! You can remain focused in Awareness. Practice this during the week.

Week #4 (5/5/10)

Focusing with equanimity on the sensation of breath in the nostrils, or on the sensation of vibration, tingling, pulsing, etc., inside the hands... this is a tool. We have been practicing the application of this tool within a specific set and setting, i.e., while sitting still and quiet for an allotted period of time. With this tool, we have been building our capacity to focus only on the feeling of sensation, without thinking about the sensation and without doing anything about the sensation. For example, when we are sitting quietly and we suddenly have a disturbing thought or hear a loud motorcycle pass by outside, this thought or this sound is heard with equanimity - it already is, and it is part of everything else that already is, and we accept what is without reacting to it or making a story out it. What we directly experience is that this thought or this sound always passes away - it is temporary - but the Awareness that allows us to perceive the thought or sound remains! In this way, we are glimpsing or tasting Awareness, through direct experience.  

This awareness is the direct experience of simply being, without any thinking or conceptualizing about what is. In the instant of this direct experience, this glimpse, this taste, where is your separate entity sense-of-self - the "me," the "I"? Is there a separate sense-of-self present, or does it only come in after the fact, when thinking says something like, "I" just felt a sense of peace, wholeness and completeness!"? Explore this yourself this week, during your sitting times. Take advantage of as many opportunities that present themselves to you to sit for 5, 10 or 15 minutes and be focused in awareness, glimpsing, tasting, resting in awareness without conceptualizing what is.