Over two decades ago, when I decided it was time to learn to meditate, I enrolled in a ten-day Vipassana course in Idaho. It consisted of some instruction via video by S. N. Goenka, a Burmese (Myanmar)-born Indian businessman who taught a meditation technique claimed to be traced back to Buddha himself — a non-denominational approach that is designed to train and focus the mind to witness the ephemeral condition of existence using the simple awareness of body sensation.
I spent up to eight hours a day, sitting and practicing the body-scan technique that was taught. Rough way to begin to learn how to meditate!
I remember one particular day, maybe day four or five, when I fought like hell to not jump up and run out of the meditation room screaming. It felt very Biblical, like Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord. I staggered out of the session in the late afternoon, wiped out physically and emotionally, wondering if I had just spent hours abusing myself.
After some tears, I felt better, and the next day, started in again.
From that day on, it felt easier.
I decided to do a second retreat some months later, this time in Joshua Tree, California. This time, by the end of the ten days, I could sit quietly and calmly for hours, as my mind obediently scanned my body for sensation. And what a lot of sensation there was now! I went from not being able to feel that much, to being able now to ‘slice’ through my arm with my attention and feel the resistance as it went through the harder section of bone in the middle. It blew my mind.
Taking two days to drive through Nevada on the way home to Utah, the second morning I was drawn by the sudden exquisite beauty of golden grasslands in the rising sun while on Highway 6. I pulled over and walked to a space overlooking the sweeping open land to the east, and sat down to meditate. I could feel the sun on my face, and the sensations of my entire body. I could feel the subtle vibrations of my own aliveness. I could see and feel the shimmering glory of everything in my field of vision. I felt huge, limitless, completely connected and whole, without boundaries, and at the same time, completely myself, as a human being. I was filled with a light and a bliss that seemed very native to who I am. Pure, deep, shining happiness.
This is the power of attention.
We do not learn that we have this ability to pay attention, living inside human culture. Most of the time, our attention is jumping from one thing to the next. Our attention is thin and unstable and reactive. Mostly we put our attention on what ‘out there’ might potentially harm us. It’s perfectly sensible, as animals. But with our capacity to make ‘time’ — to remember the past and imagine the future, we carry our thoughts of fear out of the past and future, into the present moment and stagger around with them on our backs. We have our attention on illusions. We think they are real. We will fight like hell to keep them. And we suffer mightily for them.
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My mind has lost that power and precision, as I have not kept up that intensity of meditation practice. I know the power of my attention, and yet I sometimes cling to fearful thoughts and past grievances. Yet, I want freedom from my stories of powerlessness more than anything. I am willing to interrupt my conditioned thought system, again and again and again, to weaken my conviction that the world, or this or that person is a certain way. I do this by choosing where to place my attention. Do I put my attention on what I think is screwed up? Or do I look beyond, to what is, dropping judgement and seeing the beauty of that truth?
Recently I have been playing with attention and the body again. Here’s an interesting thing: What I notice, is that what I put my attention on lights up.
If I put my attention, say, on my foot, noticing what sensation is there, allowing the sensations to reach my brain, I will begin to feel tingling or pressure. When I move my attention to my calf, and notice what’s there, my foot is still sending me feedback and information. By the time I get to my hip, my whole leg feels awake. It’s like my attention is a magic wand that creates sparklyness and enlivens everything it touches.
What if the choice you make of what to notice works the same way? If you notice all the inadequacies, the negative behaviors, the things that are not working well (for example, most of the ‘news’) — those things are enlivened and become your world.
But what if, standing quietly behind these stories of fear, there is a deeper reality that is shining, one made of pure Love? What would happen if we shifted our attention from the ‘oh-no-watch-out’ signals from our animal brains and saw beyond instead, really saw and felt the vibrant awake aliveness is behind and underneath and all around us all the time? Perennial wisdom from all traditions say that this is where we find unchanging, unconditional happiness, because this is how we experience our true nature. I experience it, and know it to be true.
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Today I am beginning to apply this superpower to my existential angst about climate change and my seemingly powerlessness to make any impact at all. I have allowed the enormity of what we are facing to enter my whole being and to feel the ontological shock of new instability of climate never thought possible, and its impacts on my life and on the lives of the young ones and our human future.
What happens if I put my attention now on the new story that is seeking to come into being? One that I will likely not live to see? I am following the leadership of Charles Eisenstein, Bayo Akumolafe and others, and dropping into my own vision of a possible future for humanity. Do we have the courage to imagine a future that is more alive and awake and in right relationship than we have ever seen?
I am sure that putting our attention on this possible future enlivens it, just as putting my attention on my foot awakens its aliveness in my awareness. I have this power. You have this power.
This is an invitation to join me to use your attention as a superpower — to create the Thought, the Blueprint of a new future world before it comes into form. Let’s be the dreamer-architects-designers that realize we can create a human existence that is far more peaceful and sustainable than how we are living now.
Let’s start by feeling our feet right now . . .