The Motion of Attention and the Realization of the Witness Position

Until you find out and Realize that Truth, you’re subject
to many illusions and less-than-Truth motives, and you are
easily stimulated by all kinds of means. Those who Realize
greatly are capable of one-pointed concentration. They are
immovable, fundamentally. They don’t suffer that
distractedness that constantly draws the apparent being into
entanglements, adventures without a great end.

Distraction is bewilderment, you see? This is why it is,
in the traditions, called “Maya” and such—even called a
place of evil in some traditions. Its constantly about
bondage. You’re bewildered, cant figure it out, it always
ends in death—every cycle. Its possible to become so
absorbed in your desiring in the indulgences, that you cease
to be serious altogether, for a time, and become more and
more profoundly degraded, hardly even noticing it.

All desire is seeking. Just as you’ve discovered about
the motions of mind in our conversations here, how they
distract you from the Witness and so on. Yes, there are
thoughts in life, but there’s a lot of action, and action is
associated with thinking, but through the medium of
desire—or desire is even the leading force in it and
mind or thoughts play around it. So you also must notice
then how the mechanism of desire binds you, dislocates you
from the fundamental Position.

So any indulgence in the motion of attention exploits the
same mechanism of dislocation from the Source-Position.

In general, the traditional practices involve the
controlling of attention, controlling of all motion from the
Source, away from the Source, however that is conceived.
Since its all one mechanism, various traditions engage in
their pursuits by exploiting one or the other of the leading
faculties—and thereby hope to control the rest. I’ve
talked to you about the four principle faculties to
constantly be turning to Me, forgetting content and feeling
beyond it in Communion with Me: The body, everything called
emotion, the mind, which is epitomized as attention, and the
breath. All the traditional Yogas include approaches that
exploit one or the other of those, or perhaps a combination
of them sometimes, in order to control all of them. Its
generally felt if you can control one, you do in fact
effectively control the others. So there are many Yogas
which exploit one or another of these capabilities
associated with these faculties. But, of course, that also
tends to become a dead end in itself and develops
modifications which then themselves become the basis for
seeking.

So in this Way that I have given you, the
faculties—the content of the faculties, the functioning
of the faculties in the context of the body-mind—are
all simply turned to Me, rather than exploiting the content
and so on. In each moment of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga, you’re
turning these faculties to Me instead, surrendering through
these faculties, forgetting the content of the faculties,
the distractions of body, emotion, mind, and breath. And, in
that forgetting, Contemplating Me, entering into fullest
Contemplation or profound absorptive Contemplation. And by
disregarding the content, you weaken it, you are less bound
to it. It progressively relaxes, its purified, disappears
from non-use—because its part of that Law I’ve told you
about, whatever you meditate on you become. But if you cease
to look on that which you’ve become, turn the faculties in
Communion beyond, then the meditation keeping it in place
relaxes. You achieve wholeness, or another kind of wholeness
or structural arrangement, not requiring those things which
you’re disregarding. And you find a fullness and well-being
in that new adjustment, which hasn’t made use of these
binding qualities, and that’s how they become thoroughly
obsolete.

Its only in your emptiness or dis-ease that you meditate
on things, so to speak—desire them or not seek them and
so forth, and become entangled in them. But if you can
forget about them long enough to establish a new wholeness,
a wholeness that doesn’t include those aberrating factors,
then they’re truly obsolete, because you already have that
fullness which you otherwise would look to achieve by those
involvements. So you don’t need them. They’re not a need in
you. They’re not about desiring.

That’s what happens when it gets fully that way, but even
in the meantime there are degrees of purification and
relaxation of the binding tendencies, and you enjoy more
discrimination about them and discipline is effective more
readily, simply. Eventually its not a struggle at all. But
when there is this true, fully established equanimity,
there’s also great concentration, freedom of energy and
attention, and the previous adaptations that were binding
have been made obsolete by non-use, through discipline,
through Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga, all of it. So you are full,
whole, not seeking, the body-mind in a state of equanimity.
You see how you’ve become disentangled. So that’s what the
original period of the process is about. And as it moves
into the Spiritual dimension of the exercise, it Realizes
Spiritual equanimity, a fullness unagitated.

And that fullness, of course, is especially magnified in
the profoundest exercise, in meditation and so on. But when
you’ve entered into that sphere of equanimity—no longer
agitated such that your practice is undermined—its then
that you are presenting yourself, or established in
equanimity and in Communion with Me, such that energy and
attention can become directly focused in the right side of
the heart. Attention not agitated, attention can be
transcended directly.

If attention is simply moving
about, you’re always noticing its objects. But if that
fitfulness relaxes, you can be sensitive to attention
itself, because its steady and doesn’t just jump to objects.
It has a certain kind of equanimity itself, such that
attention can be comprehended. And its the last thing in the
space—everything is epitomized as attention. When it is
found in the Self-Condition, in Consciousness Itself, its
something like the hearing matter. You’re in the position of
that first contraction. In fact it is the hearing matter,
but exercised at this later stage. Its like the original
hearing understanding, because you suddenly grasp
it—the self-contraction and the ability to feel beyond
it.

So in this noticing and equanimity, this noticing of
attention is the first stroke, really. It is the feeling of
relatedness, the feeling of separateness. It is the
root-disturbance, but you’re feeling beyond it. But yet you
notice this is a sensation in the midst of Consciousness
Itself, an apparition there. Suddenly you become aware of
the Self-Field in Which that primary thought or gesture is
arising. So this shift, in other words, is from being
identified with attention, by focusing on it, to being
identified with the Consciousness in Which its
appearing.

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So that is the basic event in which there is a transition
to the Witness-Position. Its not that its just an idea you
study in My Teaching, and someday it happens. This is the
process, you see. It is simply a matter of suddenly
Realizing that attention—yes, anything arising—is
simply within the sphere of Consciousness, and that That’s
Where you are. That’s What you are. You have yet to Realize
altogether What it is, but its clear that That is the
Position in every moment of experiencing. And all
experiencing is of fundamentally the same
nature—whether its gross, at the level of the body and
its relations, or deeply interior, or at the level of
attention itself.

Instead of that fitful re-identification with attention
and the whole cycle that goes beyond it, there’s an inherent
dwelling in the Position of Consciousness Prior to all of
that. And whenever attention and all of its following
reappears, the state of Consciousness Itself is clearly the
case. Every moment then becomes, so to speak, meditation on
this Sphere that is Consciousness, this Depth, this
Condition which you’re always in. But you are, like a child
pressing its face in the window looking into a house, all
kinds of absorbed in the sensations of all of this
entanglement, and never feel, enter into, profound
identification with the State you’re already in.

So Realizing the Witness is, just at that moment, just
beginning, like taking your face off the window. You sort of
stand back. Its there, but you’re not dwelling on it, not
attached to it through the mechanism of attention. And from
then you enter deeply into the feeling acceptance of that
Well, that Domain, in which I am Non-separately There,
Attractive to you, drawing you into that Depth. That’s the
Nature of the Spiritual process of the “Perfect Practice”.
And I am that Very Consciousness Itself, which you’ve
Realized non-“differently”, by Standing in My Place—in
the Transcendental Position Prior to the body-mind.

So that’s the nature of the Way of the Heart. The
question Brian asked about developmental signs in the
body-mind, including the very organs of the body-mind and
such, well, I’ve essentially covered it, and this is in My
Teaching already. But it is entirely secondary. Its not
cultivated in the Way of the Heart. Its not the goal of the
Way of the Heart. So its really about different matters than
the Way of the Heart, at least in its fundamental nature, is
about.

I mean, you could get a bunch of body-building magazines
and see the results and the physiques of the people shown
there and decide to start engaging in an intensive program
of body-building so that you can get to look like that.
There’s a lot of development of organs in that. [soft
laughter] But you’d have to almost entirely devote your
life to it—to do it like it looks in the magazines, you
see. And what’s—[Beloved chuckles.] what
difference does it make anyway? [laughter] Its just
something to do, you see. Well, the same with the possible
desiring and choosing of things subtler than the gross
world, or the gross entanglements of the body. Its the same
motive, same mechanism, you see?

You could, by a long course of discipline and preparation
and so forth, if you found the right contacts, put the body
in a position to be steadily conducting an immense cosmic
force, and you could develop every function, every center,
every potential for vision and experiencing, potentially.
And it would be very difficult, but you could choose to
devote your existence to that. And having done so, it
doesn’t make any difference. So what? Its just like doing
body-building. Maybe you can amuse yourself with it for a
while, but it doesn’t change anything to do it or achieve
it, you see. It doesn’t change anything fundamental or
profound.

So Spiritual experiences are superficial, like
body-building, and they’re based on the glorification of the
ego, the separate person. Its not easy to do, and even if
you do it, things quickly start falling apart again. If you
don’t keep lifting those weights, the body loses its
definition. You’ve got to keep pressing on those subtle
exercises there, you know, to develop otherwise. And there’s
only a relatively small likelihood of any great achievement
with it anyway. Just like very few really develop their
physique good enough to get in the magazines.

But you have to be really serious about your bondage and
the course beyond it and so forth—be really full of the
true signs of this Way—to be that direct and clear
about it such that you waste no time in the side-shows,
gross or subtle. If everyone gets distracted in this or that
or the other way through their desiring, in this Way you
must practice for real and gain the discrimination and the
capability and the Grace of Contemplation to release your
search.

You see, there is a certain amount of fun and pleasure in
conditional domains. One can enjoy, up to a point—never
utterly beyond fear and anxiety and limitation and
mortality. [laughter] But you can be amused and take
pleasure in various kinds of self-indulgence and so forth.
This is why you must exercise yourself more profoundly from
the center, at the center, and with real discrimination,
real self understanding—because you can be very easily
seduced by your entanglements and associations, and lose the
thread.

But you also must understand this is not an ascetical Way
that just mechanically dissociates from pleasure or pain.
We’ve compared this Way to the Tantric tradition—could
compare it to other traditions too that have, not an
ascetical approach, that just cut things away, but an
approach full of wisdom and discrimination, that, even while
associated with such things, conforms them to the Greater
Purpose.

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from:

“The Torque of Attention” From The Brightening Way Talk
Series

Adi Da Samraj

THE “BRIGHTENING” WAY TALK SERIES

The Yajna Discourses of Santosha Adi Da (1995-1996)

Volume 1, Number 8 – The Torque of Attention – A
Gathering “Consideration” with Beloved Adi Da Samraj in the
Manner of Flowers on January 13, 1996

Full talk – Torque of
Attention