Paying Attention

so there's a famous story which I'm sure all of you have heard before which is that when the Buddha was asked if he was a god his reply was no I'm awake so there's a direct relationship between The Awakening to enlightened awareness and the capacity to see more so it makes sense to me and I think we all have to we would agree that if Enlightenment means anything one of the things that it means is that the one who has access to online awareness sees more than those who are not and my understanding of how this happens is really very simple but it's important to understand how it works Enlightenment is about transcending the ego not a new idea everybody already knows that but it actually is really true whatever enlightened awareness is it appears to the degree that the small cell the ego mind the separate personality personal separate identities transcended even if only temporarily so the reason that uh the reason that the access to enlightened awareness enables us to see Morris because in someone who has attained a relative degree of stability in the awakened to enlightened awareness means that there as a result of a profound Awakening experience is usually what the catalyst is as a result of a profound Awakening experience a powerful Awakening experience if it's deep enough and profound enough and intense enough and long lasting enough it burns a hole in the ego so it literally really Burns a hole in the separate self-sense in our unique separate identity hold is burned by the light of enlightened awareness line within the light of enlightened awareness comes from the source of reality the source of creation from the ground of being so it means you can imagine it that it's the ego has a big circle it's our separate identity our ego mind that this Awakening experience is the uh direct cognizant of penetrating the penetrating light which is the energy intelligence that created the universe Indiana creates the universe Burns a hole in our separate identity and and if it's deep that whole is burned deep enough it lasts it remains after the experience one remains to some degree change because now there's a permanent hole in our separate identity it doesn't mean our separate identity has gone or has disappeared has vanished forever egos don't tend to vanish Forever on good days they might seem to have taken a vacation but they usually come back and take their seat again so the ego rarely disappears for very long and whenever it does disappear it always comes back but if our experience of enlightened awareness if our experience of unlined awareness has been deep enough and profound enough it will burn a permanent hole in a separate self sense which would leave us permanent to to some degree permanently transformed and the degree of that transformation depends upon how profound the experience was some people have a small Enlightenment that lasts some people have a big Enlightenment that lasts some people have an enormous Enlightenment it lasts but we are in this in this metaphorical image I'm giving we want to understand that the Enlightenment is this is this permanent Hall has been has been burned through the fabric of the separate self sense the fabric of our separate identity the ego mind it means from that moment on no matter how temporarily identified we may be with the contents of our mind and ego the presence of Eternity the grounded being The evolutionary impulse the source of Consciousness the source of creativity the source of existence is always vibrating it's always to some degree present in our awareness it means we always know who we really are no matter how things may appear to be in any moment well this is very important now the the effect of the Awakening to aligned awareness gives one a capacity to as I said Seymour someone is truly enlightened it truly has access to enlightened awareness it means they should be able to see more they should be able to demonstrate the fact that they see more in when they and how they report their observations and if you ever spent time with someone who is actually has access to aligned awareness you'll be able to tell after a while they will indicate to you through their own behavior that they see more than you do you and you'll realize oh I didn't see what they saw even though you even though you might have been having the same experience at the same time or been in the same place how they how they report their own experience to be able to tell that they could see more than you did now for someone who seems to have the capacity to see more and know more than you do we do it simply means that they've been paying more attention than you have and so that's what I wanted to talk about where where we put our attention where are we putting our attention and what is it that makes it possible for us to see more than we used to so seeing more see seeing more is not it's not just a matter of making the effort to pay to pay more attention a non-enline person can make more effort to pay attention but it's not going to give them access to enlightened awareness necessarily there has to be another mysterious element that is going to make it possible to break through to the other side in my own case my my when I met my teacher he's told me that I asked him how much effort that I have to make to be free which in this context would be to be able to see more deeply to the nature of reality and his answer was you don't have to make any effort to do that so in his answer I through his answer I actually had an experience when I stopped making the effort to try and see more deeply more clearly as a result of the letting go a capacity for deeper seeing emerged spontaneously and naturally so what I've noticed over the years and I continue to notice is that capacity for seeing deeply and seeing clearly and seeing more and knowing more and feeling more and being more conscious depends on what's most important to us so the most the reason a lot of people don't have penetrating the capacity for penetratory Penitentiary and Clarity and penetrating depth is because that's not that's not the first on their list of priorities this one is teaching the foundation of the teaching is the cultivation of the aspiration to be able to gain access to the penetrating depth of penetrating clarity as a as an existential priority it's more important for me to be able to see clearly and have access to penetrating depth than anything else is most people just don't think that way and don't feel that way that's why it's a few people are actually awake and as we all know that uh you know some fond of saying that it's easy to wake up but it's but most people fall back asleep very quickly so throughout the day when you're paying because we're all one thing I wanted to say at the beginning of the call was paying attention simply means giving giving focused presence to the inherent depth of Our Own experience of conscious awareness which is what meditation is all about so when you start paying attention to the nature of your own conscious attention you start paying attention to it paying attention to your own experience of Consciousness the ground of your own being in every single moment if you're you are awake you are aware there's something very miraculous about simply paying attention to paying attention it's like discovering oh I'm awake I didn't even know it I've actually been awake all the time but I haven't even known it which is kind of what happens when you do wake up you discover that you've been awake your whole life but you didn't even know you were sleepwalking through life one year when you awareness was always there all the time you just didn't give any attention to it because as I'm fond of saying we're always busy with the content of consciousness very rarely busy busy with giving attention to the nature of consciousness and the pursuit of enlightened awareness is the pursuit of the awakened to the nature of our own experience of Consciousness in every moment and there's a miraculous quality I've ever knewness about your unconsciousness when you discover it say oh that's what it is I remember when I came to India in 1984 read a book by uh about Rahman maharsha's teachings and he said what you're looking for is always already there and you'll be just you'll be surprised when you discovered that it's been here all along but most people when they hear that they don't really believe it but um it's true one one day in my early years here in 1984 I was I was at a beach in um in a beach in Bengal and I decided to stay up all night and meditate and I and I stayed up all night on the roof of this Bungalow I was in on the beach and I meditated all night long nothing particularly interesting happened it was kind of boring on miraculous but then in the morning I went for a walk on the beach by myself when I was finished and I had and I experienced this just penetrating inside that really swept me off my food because during that walk I saw that My Mind by the mind is just a filter you know I became apparent to me that what I was looking for the light of enlightened awareness was so ever so close it was right there was already there and I could see through the Mirage of the Mind creates all the time but I actually saw it as a mirage I saw it as a very thin Veil I could I could see through the Veil the veil was still there but I could see through it it became transparent for a few moments it was so exhilarating because then I knew I was on my way I knew that it was what I was looking for it was not far off so the miracle of all this depends upon what we are actually interested in where we're putting our attention on throughout the day most of us were busy with all kinds of other things distracted by our ego's agenda in which we're also entrenched and ego is so distracted all the time by its own fears and its own desires and it's hypnotizing and the terrifying thing is we can waste the whole human life being utterly lost and totally unconscious in the in our ego's agenda which is also cultural condition but without even knowing it so in terms of paying attention there's really there's there's context in this content this context in this content so for example as we see our experience as we see our experiences we feel our experience as we have our experience even as we think about our experience what's the context in which we're seeing our experience feeling our experience and having our experience what's the context in the show that's actually happening because the context which is going to be the particular Vantage Point through roach and from which we're observing all of it we'll inform all the conclusions are going to be making about what's happening inside us and outside it's in all around us so what's the context of the vantage point in which you're seeing and feeling experiencing the reality of conscious experience what's the vantage point What's the what's the context that you're working through that you're working with knowingly or unknowingly consciously or unconsciously so the there's the context in which your experience is happening which we need to become conscious of we need to make ourselves conscious of it if we're going to wake up if we're going to be awake and then there's the content of our experience so the content of our experience is whatever we experience thoughts feelings fears desires memories dreams hopes whatever the content is is what it is so some meditative Traditions teach us how to pay attention to the content of our experience which is called the practice of mindfulness but I don't think it's enough just to pay attention to the context I'm sorry to the content of our experience if you pay attention to the content of your experience you'll be more aware of what the content is but unless the context of paying attention is the aspiration for unconditional liberation really paying attention to what's happening in relation to the content of your experience won't help you very much so the the illumination happens when we discover the context of Consciousness itself which is infinite and it's only this the discovery of the infinite context in which in which the Awakening to Consciousness reveals to us that we can begin to see the content of our experience and it's true like but what it actually is so there's the context and the content of our experience to repeat it's very important to become be aware of both and I'm just going to repeat what I just said because it's important for most of us the context of our experience is the life of the small self to the small self is having the experience of Consciousness in the content of consciousness usually within the narrow confines of the ego's agenda when we Inspire for something bigger than that begins to create a little pressure on the small world that the ego creates a little stress so the practice of awareness practicing of awareness is often emphasized I've been emphasize the need to be aware of what's Happening as it's happening always be aware of where you are so do you see where you are moment to moment in your in your experience can you see where you are in relationship to your own hopes and to your own dreams now what I learned from my Guru is that which I'm fond of saying you have all heard me say this before he said and remember that as Nirvana has no beginning and no end so samsara has no beginning and no end so in terms of this whole question of what it means to pay attention you can pay attention to our own experience in the context of being in hell from Sarah the world that the ego creates individual Collective ego creates or Nirvana which is it which is an infinite Eternal Realm of Glorious freedom and transcendental liberation so what's what's the context in which you are seeing your experience and having your experience one one point which keeps which endlessly fascinates me is the infinite nature of Nirvana as its own context versus the infinite nature of samsara hell so when you're having an experience and you're having a painful experience and your ego is hurting and suffering are you aware that you're in the hell realm that the ego creates for itself are you not only aware of your ego's pain and suffering but are you aware of the context in which that suffering is being experienced because if the minute you are that's all you'll know you'll discover that there's a way out and when you're lucky enough to to Glimpse to have a glimpse of enlightened awareness when you wake up to the erotic potential are you aware of it when you have moments of ecstatic release a new glimpse that which is infinite that which has no beginning has no end the nature which is a kind of uncaused happiness happiness without cause are you aware of it you have to do it has to be very sensitive to be aware of these kind of distinctions there's are you when when you're paying attention to your experience are you aware of what's Happening inside you when you are you aware of the fact that when you experience happiness it might be the result of maybe getting what you want like money or new relationship or a gift our new car vacation are you are you aware of the nature of the happiness that comes from getting what you want as being distinguished from a different kind of happiness that has no cause to it causeless happiness it Springs forth from seems Seems it spring sweat from the source of creation from from nowhere and overwhelms you and are you aware of the kind of the difference between happiness attention getting what you want versus happiness that comes for no reason are you aware of what's happening when it's happening or when you experience suffering are you aware of what the cause of your suffering and so you are you a conscious enough person do you pay attention to the nature of your way your own mind works in your own conditioned relationships the nature of your own mind to see what's triggering your feelings of despair fear doubt anxiety or depression are you aware the mechanics of what's catalyzing through emotional states because a big part of waking up and being awake and paying attention is knowing what's happening and why it's happening from the perspective of aligned awareness the worst thing is to be lost in your psychological experience it's like being lost at sea floating in the middle of the ocean late at night all by yourself not having any idea where you are how to get out so what we don't want to if we're if we if we're interested in waking up and waiting to spiritual freedom we never want to get lost in that way we never want to allow ourselves to get lost in that way and one of the things that the Dharma makes clear to us is that there's always a way out it's always the way it means the use to use a metaphorical example of the the absolute principle the absolute spiritual principle is always she's always holding a hand out for us to grab onto in in any in any in all difficult situations if we have the eyes to recognize in the eyes to see it there's all when we awaken to enlightened awareness we realize there's always a way out there's always a way out there's always a way no matter how bad and how matter how dire the circumstances are how painful it might be there's always a way out but as soon as you're going to find their way out you have to get them to look for it we have to be going to want it and the problem is that most of us are living lives in which we have never considered the possibility of any freedom in a serious way and in which we're living a life with largely unconscious it's based on largely unconscious attachments unconscious fears and unconscious desires not a lot of fun so a big part of spiritual practice is is pretty is doing what I'm speaking about which is being conscious of what makes you tick in your own best psychotherapist to know what you're feeling and why you're feeling that way and to be aware of the different ways that your thought processes affect your emotions doing your emotions to think your thoughts become transparent to yourself and to become independent in your belief in Your Capacity to embrace higher freedom if you want to be found if you want to find yourself if you want to be free you have to perhaps you have to have confidence in your own capacity to do it the Buddha said to all his disciples work out your own salvation with diligence and I always found that a rather shocking teaching coming from the enlightened one because I imagine his disciples must have been quite thrilled to have found one such as such as he in spite of the fact that he was obvious he would seem to be the ultimate Exemplar of the possible when it comes to Enlightenment the ultimate teacher and guide and mentor he said to all of them work out your own salvation intelligence which which is kind of saying you're on your own kids so my interpretation of that statement is that we have to believe in ourselves you have to believe that you have the capacity to save yourself to liberate yourself doesn't mean that you don't seek help from other people who can help you accept your guidance but in the end we're all on our own in this so there has to be a profound spiritual conviction that I can do this and what that means in relation to what we're speaking about now is you have the capacity within your own awareness and capacity to make choices conscious choices to liberate yourself as far in a way as that might seem to you from a certain point of view being lost or being found as a choice because if you feel lost some of us do from time to time your son must do a lot of the time to feel lost the worst thing you can do is to give in to being lost there has to be a kind of Relentless and ferocious intentionality and your aspiration to be awake which means no matter what what's happening more than anything else you believe in your own capacity to be aware and to be awake and to see through confusion and fall asleep and when it even when it's hard even when it feels impossible but you're not going to back down and let go but you're going to for me you're going to lean tomorrow into the into the challenge of seeing clearly and that means being aware make me effort to see what's actually happening I'm not giving up believing in yourself believe me in your own capacity for clarity and for salvation so in this teaching the idea is to as I keep repeating work on cultivating the desire for freedom so much so that it will come to get to arrive at a point where you feel this independent it's the independent inspiration to liberate yourself unconditionally as the most important aspiration in your life because you've realized unless I could be free unless I can liberate myself unconditionally from my own mind my own crazy mind and everybody else is crazy in mind I don't have a hope and a prayer that maybe I'll get through this on the right side of the tracks so if you believe in yourself and you believe in your own capacity to do this you're going to start paying much closer attention to your experience with creator ferocity and intensity because you're going to know that the key to your own liberation is in your own capacity for seeing clearly it's in your own experience clearly just seeing it to yourself with greater clarity because in the end it's the choices we make in the actions we take and lead us to Liberation or or to hell right as many spiritual teachers tell us and then I want to think that anyone thinks I've been trying to say for a long time is that it's not what happens to us not the experience we have but our relationship to it that just that determines a capacity for freedom so so is there in your own experience a a conviction because I can feel in my own experience of awareness inherited my experience of awareness and just the experience of paying attention to being aware there's a ground of conviction so my Guru said to me the only difference between Enlightenment and unenlightenment is doubt so are we present enough that we awaken up in present enough in our own experience of awaken consciousness to be able to face Mara or face doubt face the temptress that is doubt without being intimidated because you have to be very awake and very aware to see the temptress for the tempter the who he or she is and not to be frightened not to be intimidated not to back down not to withdraw and to crawl back into our Harbor to Arcade in Terror and in order to in order to be able to stand your ground and all great realizes have to stand their ground in the face of enormous doubt from in the face of the temptation to doubt if it comes from the power of our own conviction that we experience the very ground of our own experience of awareness and in terms of the context of your experience if you really want to do this as I was saying earlier you become aware that the ego has its own agenda as Nirvana has no beginning and nowhere and so samsara has no beginning and no answer the ego has its own agenda it's on storyline its own plans the ego has other plans it has its own agenda the ego relates the present moment to the past and to the Future based upon certain perceived needs and preferences that have nothing to do with spiritual freedom that's the samsara part the Nirvana part is the Awakening to What's called the true self or the authentic cell when you have moments when you awaken to your own true self you run authentic self through experience you'll discover there's a completely different self-sense inherently it's an inherently self-existing always already inside of you which you were not which you most of us were not previously aware of but when you awake into that part of your own self you experience the kind of Happiness that's unimaginable and joy and enlighteness of being it has nothing to do with anything personal the feeling of exhilaration and gratitude really the fact of being conscious of existing that is utterly intoxicated and in these moments you realize that your own experience of happiness with the experience of happiness that comes from where I'm calling the victim to the true self the authentic self exists in a completely different category in a different dimension and the world of Diego operates in it's like waking up from a nightmare when it literally is waking up from a nightmare you realize oh my God I had no idea it was possible to do this happen to be this free to feel this free to know this much joy and to feel this much potential and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything I've ever done in the past it seems to exist in another dimension it's always available to me when I let go of the Eagles world so as I always repeat on these calls that's the difference between relative reality and absolute reality and are you aware of the difference are you paying attention close enough to your own experience to be aware of the huge distinction experience of relative reality of absolute reality do you know the difference are you paying close enough attention to your own experience another difference between relative happiness which is the result of the ego getting what it wants or getting rid of what it doesn't like versus absolute reality which is the Awakening to these deeper dimensions of our own self that you experience in a kind of happiness that is on cause itself exists that's independently self-existing always already and the experiences that kind of Happiness sets us free it's an experience of liberations are coming out of jail I'm gonna have a prison every time and it's not it's not the result of getting anything or doing anything it's something I'll always only do is off of letting go of everything so if you start paying closer attention to your own experience and your relationship you're reminding your own feelings you will realize that you're on unhappiness with the experience of being less than deeply and fully happy this is all it's always almost it's almost always a result of making the wrong choices and what we're identifying with in relation to our thoughts and feelings when we get too lost in relative reality we begin to suffer a lot as most of us do and from the perspective of enlightened awareness if you wonder why you're suffering so much you begin to pay attention to what you're identifying with usually unconsciously you start to see the causes of your own experiences of despair disappointment so if you want to be free and you want to be gloriously happy they have to be willing to let go of anything and everything I want to hold you back from being completely free which takes enormous courage and profound inspiration and the practice of enormous attention attention to the context of your experience attention to the choices that you're making how conscious are you of the choices that you're making or whether where those choices are coming from in you so many of our thoughts and feelings are so deeply conditioned and robotic so much of our relationship to life is is conditioned and uncreate and if you begin to pay for more attention to work to what's happening inside of you you'll see it for yourself and there's the context of your experience and the content of your experience the relationship to the content always depends upon the context in which you're choosing from this perspective aligned awareness to be in hell is a choice and to be and to be in heaven is also a choice once you know where heaven is and what hell is and then you then you have a choice if you don't know any better you don't know what you're doing it's like we lost in the desert lost its sea drowning in the ocean utterly loss and not even knowing it but once you have seen deep into nature of your own mind and nature of the Mind the nature of Heaven nature of health and you always have a choice so at a certain point if you have a certain amount of experience it becomes apparent to us that we have a choice to be liberated sometime around nowish if we wanted to make the right choices we're going to let go of on everything that's Keeps Us ensnared in hell and Freedom Is Ours just like the experience I had that morning on the beach it's never far away but we have to really want it so are you are you aware of the context of your experience the context of the view that you're choosing fears and desires it's very important that we are found that we find ourselves don't allow ourselves to be lost don't allow yourself to be lost no sorts of wasted far too much precious time being lost if you want to be free you have to find yourself and know where you are be aware the choices that you're making and where they're coming from where the context and what your choices are being made always pay attention to what you're doing and why you're doing it your true self is always paying attention the ego is always distracted when you wake up from here you go you awaken to the true self you'll realize that you're always paying attention because you didn't even know it it's a shock it's it's an exhilarating shock it's kind of mind-bending when you have that the realization that you've always been paying attention you always have been seeing deeply which you simply weren't aware of it because you were lost in the drama of the small self and didn't even know you were lost so paradoxically when you wake up from being lost you realize that from at the highest level you were never lost you were always free but if that's true it's not going to do you any good unless you actually know it was important to do the spiritual work necessary to be able to realize this very consciously and conscientiously and then take responsibility for it and abrasive with all of your heart and then delivered