Disposition, Reality, Attention, and Spiritual Work. Part One
Directing Reality
Directing one's disposition, one's reality. It's not a simple matter of thinking good thoughts versus bad thoughts. Or even analyzing one's psychology. No, it's much greater than that and simpler than that. It is the matter of attention.
The Power of Attention
Our power of being lies in attention. When we pay attention to something, we fill our reality with that which we attend. But our attention is easily distracted. Almost as if it has a mind of its own.
Attention Hijacked by the Ego
And in some ways it does. Our attention has been hijacked by something we call our ego, that self of that virtual world of thought and knowledge. Being a creation of thought, it requires attention to forms and matter in order to gain its identification with what it sees as the real world.
Dying a Thousand Deaths
Such identification takes its attention here and there. Always for naught though, for true being does not lie in that outward direction. And so it dies each day a thousand deaths. Thus, fear and loathing fills its attention. Becomes our reality.
Being Asleep and the Nightmare
And our consciousness, our being in essence, becomes asleep. And our life becomes a nightmare.
(Intervals of Life)
(Although there are those moments when consciousness almost involuntarily retakes attention: a baby's smile, a lover's touch, a poem, a flower, a mountain vista, the endless view of the sea. For a moment we feel wide awake and alive. But sooner or later that moment passes.)
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