Italie 2012-13_La pratique de l'attention

Most people just don't know how to to engage with their mind and personalities without it automatically coming from the ego. And even if it's not always coming from the ego, they don't know when the ego comes in and they don't know when the ego comes out. So we have to start very carefully, very slowly, very mindfully with this with, you know, working with this precise science. And as we get more comfortable because the what I call the authentic self, the self that's not ego uh feels free because it it's not burdened by all the problems and fears and concerns of your ego. It just isn't. It's not denying that they're there, that your ego has these problems, but it's that that part of yourself isn't burdened by them, isn't threatened by them, and isn't particularly intimidated by them. So, so why we want to spend time cultivating our capacity to yeah to develop this skill is so slowly slowly we want to learn how to include more and more of the human experience without including the ego. and in and then we want to get to the point where we more or less include just about every aspect of the human experience that we you know that makes sense to include. There's a lot of things we don't want to include because they're just totally insane but but but we want to include every aspect you know or as much as possible you know that makes sense to include while still leaving the ego out in the cold. Now that doesn't mean the ego is never going to get in there, right? But but it because it will at times but the thing is it means most of the time which is what counts it won't. And that but we have to learn how to do that. That's that doesn't happen just as a result of awakening. It's not a flash of non-dual insight into nature of reality. It's a scale a skill you have to learn. It's a different way of being. It's a different state of consciousness. It's a different level of awareness that takes practice and discipline and practice and discipline and commitment and practice and discipline and commitment. But it can be done. Uh but you have to be really committed and and remember there's two dimensions to it. One as I just explained one is transcending learn learning how to transcend see through and objectify our psychological fears, concerns, worries and desires and attachments. We really have to learn how to objectify them and become very familiar with what they are for us. And the other is learning how to discern and objectify all the ways in which we are still attached and identified with a uh cultural values that we actually are trying to transcend. Because once again, in the way I was explaining before, we're still most of us are still emotionally identified with cultural values that that we may be simultaneously trying to transcend because we've had a vision. We've experienced insight. We've had a we've had a a we've had moments of enlightened awareness. We've seen through to another possibility for human beings and for oursel that we are aspiring towards. But at the same time, there may be and probably is areas of our psyche of our of ourselves that is still emotionally embedded or emotionally attached to values that are in conflict with what we're aspiring for. And so making that conscious because because in you know I haven't spoken a lot about this in this particular retreat but the self you know this the personal self is not merely an ego it it's it's also a culturally created self structure. So culture creates the ego also right your your psychological self doesn't exist in isolation from culture culture produces it and creates it. So culture is not empty of preferences. Empty, you know, culture is our our worldviews and values and emotional preferences. It's the big super ego. So that's embedded in the great ground of our self. You know, it's closer than close. You most it's very difficult to see these dimensions of oursel because it's literally the very fabric and ground of the self that we are. So learning how to objectify and you know we can do this in this kind of holonic work you know and also just in our own consideration and observation of oursel but but you you want to learn to objectify the old and objectify the new objectify the old. You can help it helps to make subject object what was subject what was self object it objectify when you objectify you can actually begin to see it if it's still only subject you can't see it right so if this is for example the old values if all values are subject you can't see it they're there and you say where I can't see it but it's too close that's why you can't see it so you have to make subject object and then when it becomes object you go oh So it was there all the time but you just literally couldn't see it because you were you were it was too it was you. So when you make when you make it object then you can suddenly see it when you see it you can change your relationship to it but if you can't see it you can't change your relationship to it. So uh so that that's difficult to do at a psychological level but it's much more challenging to do at the level of these of these uh values that you know the shared superego the the cultural culturally conditioned self and once again the reason is because we're uh there's many ways in which we're emotionally embedded probably in shoulds and shouldn'ts and preferences desires and attachments that may come from that that that may have nothing to do with what we believe we're aspiring for. And so we need it takes a lot of work to sort all this out, but that's that's a big part of the work to be done.