What Do I Do with my Attention/Awareness?

This is a really interesting question. Someone asked this after class yesterday. When I am practicing, what do I do with my awareness?  Or what do I do with my attention all of the time?  Like, do I put my attention in the tanden and hold it there. And then what if my mind wanders? Is that bad? Or if my mind goes from my breath and then to other things, is that okay…?  A few people described how they bring their attention back if it wanders.  How their attention goes from wide and scattered to being right here, and how their practice seems to fluctuate in that way.

Well, I think this is a really interesting question. For starters, I’m not sure what this means anymore. What am I doing with my attention… My mind goes blank when I am asked that. Where is my attention, that’s an interesting question.  For starters, I don’t know.  I don’t think about it that way anymore. I am not thinking about my attention. I am very curious. Mostly I am just being with what is happening.  Mostly I am just here in this very situation, feeling.   I feel this room, this garden, this street I am walking down…. I’m so curious because I feel that my life is not my own, but I am just an overflowing of something bigger.  

I don’t think about what I am doing with my attention because I am receiving what is happening.  The dynamism of the present event isn’t something to understand.

I am framed by this environment right now.  I feel a sense of pressure or texture of this very environment, and that fabric of this environment, I am meeting that.  My experience is one of melding with everything around me, melding with the flavor of the situation.  I do not think about what I am doing with my attention. I allow it to blossom. 

I do feel the tanden, feel the room, and feel this specific flavor and meld with it.  I am not controlling my attention. I am not pinning my awareness in the tanden. I am wide open. My breath, the energy, my body are all a part of that meeting and harmonizing with this very moment.

Someone asked me, do you ever feel like you do not harmonize with this moment? Are you in the way?  Or in conflict with this moment?  Well, I can say that I am the worst.  I am the worst. And that has been my gift. It’s made me who I am and given me insights for people struggling in this process. I especially used to be such a walking ki problem that my whole existence was that of conflict. Walking, existing in space, enjoying life, feeling good, most of my experience was that of feeling a pressure cooker in which I could not meet the present circumstance. I was full of vitality, intense and energetic, but I could not meet life.  That’s not to say I did not have friends or was unsuccessful. I was. There was just this sense of needing to touch and meet life in this deeper way.

I could not get myself in harmony with life.  I was a walking chaos of intensity. And so I made it my whole existence to discover how to do that.  It was not from a good idea, but out of necessity.  And how could I meet life, with every cell, in this very body, walking around, interacting with others, a life where I could finally be at peace. A life that felt true to the way of the universe. I knew there was something to discover in this life, and the challenge of that possibility I was willing to risk everything for. I needed to  realize that. Every fiber of my being would not rest until I found that. 

But over time, and this completely changed my life, I found that if I truly felt, if I was truly honest, I would see that harmony is trying to happen. Every cell is being opened up by the environment, by this very huge moment, continually. My whole being, if I listened, was being guided, molded to open up to life at all times.  So this was not something I mastered or became an expert in. I was not a genius practitioner.  I was not the most talented. I was just a person deeply suffering without this connection who had to find a way out of suffering. There was no choice. And the way I did that was to feel. And when I felt, I saw that the universe was guiding me how to open up to it.

I write this over and over, and still people can’t get it. It’s like they can’t hear me.  That’s okay.  I am hoping some seeds are being planted. I am not talking about something abstract. I am talking about the most practical thing in your experience right now. Meeting that and being honest.  It’s not somewhere else.  This moment is where it is.  You don’t need more energy to find it.  You just need to be honest enough to truly give in to it.

So, what is my awareness like? What does it feel like?  

Well, I have done a lot of practice, and so my breath and the energy and my body are all kind of the same thing. When I look at something or focus, my breath follows and the energy is unifying with that. They have all come into oneness. This is not because I have mastered a technique, but rather just from getting into my body, allowing my whole being to unify.  But make no mistake, everyone can do this and it is trying to happen with everyone reading this right now.  

But, to be honest, it takes a few years of serious practice to be able to feel what’s going on. We just can’t feel, and learning to focus takes serious effort. I’m not talking about just mindfulness. So I’m not talking about just a person letting go without practice generally, this is only surface level. It takes a few years to learn how to focus and feel it, unless someone has extremely ripe karma.

A good way to work with this is to just do everything we are doing completely.  When sweeping the floor, only sweep the floor. When raking leaves, only raking leaves. When walking, totally walking.  In this way, our whole being comes together. This is much different than trying to think about no thoughts or to control the mind.  The mind will unify as we do what we are doing completely.

At a certain point, I experienced something which changed everything for me. I got honest enough to hit the mainline of existence. And now I don’t think about all of this like I used to. I don’t think about my awareness as good or bad or right or wrong.  Like I couldn’t quite get there no matter what I did. I went through a big process, and my perspective dramatically shifted. Now I am this walking emergence.  I’m no longer in the search for truth.  I’m now coming from that place rather than chasing it.  So my awareness is not something that is doing something anymore, like hysterically chasing after the truth.  I am curious.  I have no more doubts about getting it or not.  My faith in it changed forever.

I feel there is oneness, and then there is the jamming up of that oneness. And I see very clearly when I am in the way of this oneness. This is not a casual thing. It is also not a concept I am thinking about, but more physical. The body does not lie. I feel my experience as a kind of pressure or texture, and if I am with reality, with this yolking of all things, that pressure is wide open. If I get slogged down in life, that pressure  molds me to align with this unity.  There is a green light or a red light. That’s it.  I don’t think but I let go into this unity, this present circumstance over and over. I am sitting on the couch right now writing, and then I will walk outside and that will be another flavor of oneness which I feel and become. I am ever presently melding with life.   

This process is not exhausting as it might seem.  It is more like home base. It is not leaving my experience to go and meet life. It is like making things right continually. It is the most home, the most basic.  Like I am sealed in this present moment.  

There are all of these concepts out there about practice.  And then we dig into our own process and we discover the energy, the internal momentum of it, and then we begin to drop all ideas and be driven by this inner process. We don’t know where it is going. We know we must drop our ideas, as they get in the way.  

I can’t explain the incredible joy of catching hold of this light exploding through us when we finally begin to meet this very spark of the present.  It is shocking at first to feel the hugeness of this empty field.  

And so we begin a revolutionary process of being guided further and further into our own personal process. And in that, our most personal process, we discover something way beyond techniques, something we never could have imagined. And that is our guide. We see over time what the old masters were saying fits with our process, even though we were led in our own way.  We see the wildness of letting go, and how the universe is guiding us. We are wide open, not controlling, and allowing the Tao or God or Dharma to freely express.  We see it’s not really our process, our awareness, but everyone’s process, and so we finally have something to truly offer in this life. The knowledge of how all things are awakened to this true mind.  If we truly wake up we bring everyone with us.

So, that’s what I’m doing. I don’t know what I am doing with my awareness. I let all of the horses run free. I’ve given up the game and gone out to graze with the horses. I am making dinner. I’m feeling my kids, meeting their beautiful spirits. Wrestling with them. I am melding with my wife. This moment has a texture and I am becoming that texture. I’m not an expert, but someone embued with life. I don’t know what will happen next.  How can I explain this?  I am at once floating on the wings of the infinite and at the same time just being a dad and husband in the most practical, most natural way. Although my experience of all of this is fundamentally resolved, I am both unattached and completely down in the grit of life mixing it up and getting my bruises and learning and messing up and healing. Both at once. 

Why would we do this if we just end up being a normal-ish person living a normal-ish life?  Look them in the eye and the earth trembles. 

I can also say that within this opening up to this greater life, experiences will come which will change you forever. And gifts will naturally emerge out of this process.  And these gifts will give you, with time, a way to communicate and transmit this with others. It just happens naturally. Why, because you have walked it, and now you know the way.

It makes you innocent. Don’t pack a bunch of luggage because it’ll tear all of that open. There is only this huge moment.  

I hope some of this is helpful to a few of you out there.  I know this stuff is niche in a way.  Most people are not ready for this kind of description.  But for a few people, I hope this mobilizes your entire being and helps give compass to that fever burning inside of you. 

Painting by Momo age 8