You live your life focusing attention outside of yourself. You are oriented by your senses, which are constantly drawing your awareness outward, onto an object or situation. Because of this you tend to become engulfed by this type of external attention.
Attention is directed awareness. But when it is directed outwardly that awareness becomes the object of the attention – your consciousness becomes the object. It loses its pure awareness status and becomes lost in the object of attention. Then you lose the witness, the source, the foundation. You lose your Godhood and the foundation of all that is.
When you switch attention from without to within you first meet up with your thoughts and feelings – and that isn’t always a pretty picture. So there can arise a fear or hesitation to explore more of what is inside of you. When you first sit to meditate, often you are engulfed with non-stop thoughts and dissonant feelings. Who would want to immerse themselves in that? But there is so much more inside that lies just beyond the surface waves of these thoughts and feelings. There is an ocean of Presence, The true Self, the Witness, Pure Consciousness, God.
It shouldn’t be a matter of pushing through the thoughts and feelings or trying to control them or pushing them away in a war with them. Inner discovery shouldn’t be a struggle or war with the mind. When you turn within with ease, with allowing and with the highest degree of Self-love and Self-acceptance you can allow the thoughts and feeling to play out and you can watch their play without becoming them.
When you are in activity take a moment and pull your awareness back from the attention upon objects and circumstance and allow that awareness to be recognized as pure awareness –You. When you go within take the same stance. Allow the thoughts and feelings to be watched, allow them to arise and subside, and realize that you are the awareness watching them, allowing them. When you allow the thoughts and feelings to come and go, arise and subside naturally, you loosen their grip upon your attention. You create a space for the awareness itself to dominate and the attention on the thoughts and feeling to diminish. This is the first step toward realization, the permanent experience that you are pure Awareness; God.
