An Empty Bliss Beyond This World

Training your Higher Self to Function

Action is ordinarily guided by intention. Intention is guided by perception (how you see the world and what you see in it). Perception is based on how and where your attention is focused.

The ordinary state of consciousness does not notice Being. The soul (you - the personal, living, important, evolving you) is thus away from its source and acting out of accordance with its own Beingness, and so its actions, guided by its misperceptions, leave all sorts of contamination in their wake. In this case, like begets like - misperceive a situation, misperceive your very existence, and this is essentially due to a contamination. In response to a contaminated perception, your movements are also contaminated. You are responding to a situation that isn’t there and so you are actually quite useless much of the time, if not flat out destructive toward yourself and others. We would all like to be exempt from such a law, but it is not so. We do not and cannot yet act from a fully actualized place.

By noticing the Universe in a way that de-structuralizes the patterns and habits of attention that characterize the ego, we can enter a decontaminated refinery of the mind. It is not pure perception yet, but it is a rapidly purifying form of meditative activity.

Ego consciousness is always focused on thoughts and activities, objects, persons, and intentions guided by the unsatisfied ego consciousness, which is the ultimate corruption of the pure soul. So when driving down a road it does not notice the Beingness of things, so it does not notice things as they are. It does not See the other cars in their Beingness, for example. It may see obstacles, dangers, annoyances, impressiveness; in short, otherness. It is not only what it sees that matters though, because this determines how it relates to things and this is very very important. Finally, it orchestrates the shifts in attention from moment to moment. There are no gaps in its unconsciousness. It notices one self-serving object after another.

Here is the practice:

You are trying to find the least “relevant” detail you can possibly find in the total field of experience. Then you focus your attention on it. Sometimes it may be the feeling of your pinky resting on the counter. At other times it may be the visual edge of an object. You can find an infinite number of “irrelevant” details in the universe. Try this on anything, anywhere you are. If someone hands you a glass of water, notice the white of their fingernail, or watch the streak of light from the overhead lamp shift on the surface of the cup. When you drive, notice the edge of the tire on a car in front of you. Notice the shadows the cars are producing. Notice the sensation of your eyes moving around. Notice your tongue touching your teeth.

Why this works:

Ego is highly interested in things that are relevant to its story and its survival. By paying attention in an entertaining way to things that have nothing at all to do with linearity and time, Pure Attention begins to function. Pure Attention begets pure perception, which in itself is a joy. From there, clean action results in a clean relationship to the world. A healthy and happy existence is cultivated.

Your attention normally works by habitually focusing on certain objects. It rarely takes a break from this conditioning. When the computer closes, it shifts over to thought, from thought it moves to some activity. A book, another thought, a refrigerator, a person, a television, a feeling. This is a disease! Right now it is absorbed in a computer screen. The computer screen is deeply mingling with the mind. The attention can hardly tell the difference between the mind and the computer. Notice one of the creases on one of your knuckles. That exists too. Equally as everything else. Do this sort of noticing for long enough and you will feel lighter. You may feel intentionless. If ego panics, as if it is suffocating, and creates anxiety, give it a little food to pacify it. Focus on something mind-numbing and meaningless like you always do for a little while and then move back to irrelevant details. Something should begin to emerge. A different perception of the world. Suddenly, your problems don’t look so serious. Neither do your desires. Nor does anything you have or own already matter as much. You and your activities and your contaminated perceptions are intimately linked. Destroy the perceptions by literally ignoring them into non-existence and the contaminated you will also disappear. You can even do this on a computer. Take your hands off. Notice the colors. The corners of the computer screen. It is hard on the computer because attention is extremely compulsive here.

Ordinarily in meditation the focus of the meditator is on, say, the breath, because this is where they are taught to begin. This is a horrible method. The reason it’s horrible is because you’ve given the ego a task and you sit in place for an hour a day giving the ego something new to do. It cares about feeling good and having cool experiences. It has misperceived meditation because it sees a mental image of the future. It is following its story line. In the irrelevant details, even the intention to pay attention to irrelevant details disappears. Because it turns out to be a non-activity. It is just the cultivation of pure perception. Without the karma ego-based activity churns out reinforcing itself, the act of noticing irrelevant details becomes the non-action of noticing Being itself. This is non-action because it is the way things are before intentionality/desire.

When you masturbate, your focus is generally on your genitals and some images. Try paying attention to odd details of the images. Close your eyes and notice the feelings in your face, in your mouth, the black beneath your eyelids, your feet. Do the same when you eat. When you brush your teeth. Look at yourself in the mirror. Fall asleep.

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    Training your Higher Self to Function:
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