A continuation of the post of October 31, 2009.
…As you improve your capacity to actively notice what you are feeling and thinking, and what is happening around you, turn that noticing into the expansion of awareness. Invite into your being a new openness and allowing that will begin to dissolve barriers around the little self. The focus of this is the release of your identity with form, and that which is separate from the Cosmos.
You may use noticing as a technique within your meditations. Observe, for instance as you sit still, that there are holes within the fabric of your thinking. There are occasional brief pauses in the streams of thought. There are openings between all the streams as well, loopholes if you will.
Use your imagination to zoom down to microscopic levels in these holes. There, if you are patient, you will recognize what we call points of peace. Now apply your awareness to these points. Center in on them. Relax into their spaciousness. They feel enormously peaceful. When you enter their orbits, you feel blanketed by the most refreshing and calming influence. If you do this, you will find that they are not only supremely serene, but they are also internal power generators of great strength.
Peace points are always within your reach; they are built into every conscious inner being. Normally, in humans, they’re layered over by the jumble of thoughts, emotions and physical vibrations. The belief that you are an isolated individuality reinforces these distractions in your head. The point here is to make conscious what already exists. You do not have to go searching for peace. That would be a mental activity, and it would only cover the points over with another layer of mind stuff. This is what spiritual seeking does, by the way. It layers over the very thing you think you are looking for, and leaves it perpetually hidden. Seeking does not reveal what is sought; only that which is sought can reveal itself. Instead of seeking, allow yourself to be patient, and notice.
“But that sounds like it would take an eternity. And besides, I have found many things in my life by searching for them.”
What you have found is not what you sought, my friend. It is a mental facsimile of that. Searching for things only creates more things in your life. If you are seeking the spirit, the soul, you will never find it in the mind.
“Hmm. I guess I always knew that somehow.”
To resume: The loopholes in thought will inevitably slide by, entirely unnoticed by the mind. As strange as it might sound to your ears, noticing is not a mental function; it is actually the way out of mind. It does not take long for the openings to appear. A few minutes is often enough to observe one of these peace points. Most likely you will feel it rather than see it, but every person senses them in a unique way. You know when you’ve found one because it feels like you are being drawn into a vacuum of stillness. Bear in mind, this is subtle. Many humans have trained themselves to enter these points without knowing exactly what they are. People who meditate regularly are bound to be acquainted with the feeling of them.
What I recommend is to not let them pass out of your awareness. This is difficult to express in words and thoughts, so please bear with me. There is an essential paradox here. You are focusing your awareness indeed. But awareness also is focusing you! Awareness actually arises out of these points; it arises out of peace and bliss, and so do you. It is the background oneness for all activity in the physical universe. Even the word ‘arise’ is misleading. Nothing arises really, because this peace already exists. It has forever existed within the within…
Copyright © 2009 by Robert Potter
Letters From 500 