In some of the meditations on the Waking Up app, Sam Harris says something like 'look for who's looking' or 'turn attention back on itself'. So, say it's an eyes-open session, and you're looking at an object, you see the object across space, at some distance, out there. When he says 'look for who's looking', for a flash there's this realisation that all that's there is the object. That what's looking is, in effect, what's looked at... or, that there is no difference between what's looking and what's looked at. It's like those old stereoscopic glasses, when you get the focus right, the two images suddenly become one, flash!, a 3D image!
He says, in eyes-shut meditations, 'Who is thinking? Is there a thinker or just the thoughts?' I have to, grudgingly, agree, that there are just thoughts - or sounds, sensations, whatever is grabbing the attention. There isn't really a thinker. But what there is, it seems to me, when I pay attention (wait - who is this 'I' who is paying attention? That's another step into the mystery world of self and consciousness that none of these meditation people quite manage to explain to me.... I mean, they tell someone to pay attention and the payer of attention attends and who is that payer if not me? But I digress) what is there is either a story-being told (this could be an argument-being-stated) or a list-being-made.
The point is that what these thoughts - whoever is thinking them or not thinking them - are doing is trying to order the world. They are seeking to make sense of it. To make sense of what has been experienced (or read or heard) in the past and to construct a sensible priority-list for the future. It is, indeed, the case that the thoughts are never here in the now - they are there in the past or in the future. Meanwhile, the sensations and the sounds are here in the present, but the thoughts don't usually seem to like that. They want to head back or forward. This present moment seldom offers much to detain them.
I suppose that the wonder-moments and engagement-spells are exceptions to this rule. Which is possibly why they are so valuable.
In addition, the fact that I read so much and listen so much leaves my poor thoughts with so much to try to make sense of. It's like I keep on shoveling all this stuff their way and they are doing their best to structure it.
I should be grateful.
I am grateful - though it's bloody tedious - for their list-making efforts. I've noticed that once a thing is on the list, it tends to get done. However much I don't want to do it. Though, now I say that, I realise that what happens is that the thoughts make two lists. The one I have to obey and the one that really, be a good sport, I should obey but they know I'm unlikely to do so. That's not how I think about it when it's happening. But it's what does happen. there's the list in ink and the list in pencil. The thoughts seem to know, without me telling them, that I will do the inked list, however unpleasant the items on it, while I'll ignore the pencil list even if I don't really mind doing those things.
Then there's the issue of moods. Sam says, 'Notice if there's a mood.' Now, I certainly notice my mood when I'm out and about - and good ones do make the world sparkle, while glum ones de-focus everything and dampen the colours. But in meditation, with nothing there to sparkle or not sparkle, I can't capture the sense of mood. In the world of just consciousness, the mood is too airy a thing to see. Or maybe it's that the whole of the consciousness is so pervaded by the mood that it can't see it in itself... if you see what I mean.
What I do know, I think, is that just as moments of wonder enrich us with that given-sense of value and meaning, so the inner world of self bestows on the outer world too value and meaning, depending on the beliefs and feelings which are attached to memories and thoughts of what is being experienced. The inner and the outer are permeable to each other. Just as we can see, when turning attention onto itself, that what's attending is what's attending to, so we should realise that what we are attending to is altered, coloured, enriched or drained by what is doing the attending. There is osmosis; experience of the world is the world as we experience it. You can't cut the two in two.
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