Mindfulness and courageous consciousness

For the first time ever, a few minutes ago, I thought of being born as an act of courage in contrast to a passive event. Since living after being born is anything but passive, if the experience is to be worthwhile, let's take the logic the whole way back.

I am quite convinced that my living began long before I was born or even conceived. Animals, with thier limited ability to think, don't wast time with endless loops of pseudo-learning. They get on with living ASAP.

Humans are not so direct. Formality, finance and fickleness are merely some of the fiends that dent the possibility of mindful consciousness from the word go.

What's mindful consciousness? My answer is that it's full awareness intact from the distractions of everyday disruption and interruption. It's a happy meeting point where thought, emotion and decision come to rest in a balance of peace. I think that Louis MacNeice worded this place in his poem "Meeting Point".

Peace is not something you sink into. Peace is something you create with courage, by steering your own living beyond the boundaries of fear, like fear of losing your loved ones, fear of poverty, fear of being wrong in your faith, fear of God, fear of being punished for not being obedient or compliant enough, fear of isolation, fear of defeat.

To experience losing fear all you have to do is take the first step and act, to move beyond that fearful boundary. The first step is the worst.

You just do it, and the next timeit's not as bad. Gradually, step by step, you learn to manage to get quite far. You learn to think as far as you want to. You learn to feel beyond given boundaries. You learn that your decisions can be as valid as anybody's. You learn the difference between courage and recklessness. If you want to find a way, you should learn the difference between your way, my way, our way and the only way. It's always a matter of balance.

I understand that the more you develop mindfulness, the more your capacity for courageous consciousness grows. Everyone has an own calling to courage, and whether it's a public demonstration or a private perseverance, following that calling to courage is an intense honour.

The journey is unpredictable, and the calling comes spontaneoulsy. Developing mindfulness is the preparation required to act when the need arises. One of the tests of whether the time has come to respond courageously is the sense that if you do something that's right, you will stand out and be noticed with disapproval.

Discretion and mindfulness work differently: discretion is when it's wise not to do something, and mindfulness is when it's wise to do something that should be done when no-one else is prepared to act.

Once you embark on that journey, there's no telling where you will go.

You will, however, learn the real learning: that each hour it's possible to inspire as well as mystify yourself and others.

And if the experience isn't humbling, it was never courageous.

Bio-focusing: an eternally living lens

You come to the point where you have to choose what sort of a lens you are. I have discussions with my neighbour who says he's a sceptic, and that when you die, you go out like a candle-flame, and that's the end. I don't argue because I've learnt that you can't argue with a decision. I've spent a long time coming to my own decision. I don't know exactly what to expect, but I do expect experiences  of deep peace, vivid excitement, joy of home and friendship, and the thrill of re-discovery.

Having been born as a human in a specific context, and having the gift of language to explore this context, I have been extremely baffled by people who use language to limit their "lens-ability".

A lens is a material thing, and living is an activity, so the metaphor is forced, but it's helpful to reduce the complexity of living to simplicity, which is what we do all the time.

The activity of seeing is complicated enough, and an ophthalmologist could spend hours explaining what happens when we see, but we don't need to hear the explanation in order to see. We just see.

Living is even more complicated, and can't be reduced to anything, especially not a belief system. There's far too much going on with and in our minds for us to come up with anything neat to package the vastness of experience.

The word "decision" implies conscious choice, but I've come to realise that there's actually a sliding scale of conscious choice. Visceral, cognitive and volitional awareness focus inasmuch as we choose to focus. I don't think we're in a position to choose with full awareness, since awareness itself is a growing thing.

If we're fortunate enough to have been intellectually schooled, we have some control in respect of thinking clearly. If we've come from any platform that has instilled emotional balance in our hearts, we're blessed. Yet living itself is an emotional maze.

Our most vivid emotions come from "deep within the marrow" as my Irish friend puts it. We can't help those ones.

Then, again, perhaps, if we pay attention to them, we can own them rather than them owning us.

They're not pleasant. In fact, our instincts often instruct us to get away from these emotions as far and as fast as possible.

My personal worsts are fear of and rage at being made powerless by the folly of people who have authority over me, despair of never experiencing closeness with another human, and overwhelming pain for the pathos of suffering living beings. By learning to embrace rather than run from these, I have discovered that willing, conscious focus of personal energy creates amazing paths of realization, relief, contemplation and compassion.

To get to this place you have to allow the sense of ultimacy to come to rest in your living. Ultimacy isn't the end, but the sense of what's at the end, and it's a big, scary sense.

So what's at the end? There's no way I can or want to try to word that one. I'm more confident of wording what's in the middle, which is my lens of living. in the here and now. Bio-focusing means taking what surrounds living in the here and now and letting that massively imponderable and incomprehensible yet immeasurably vivid current leap through minute details of daily living. Beauty may seem complicated if you analyse it, but to experience it is infinitely simple.

 

The energy in focusing

I teach people and organisations how to focus. There are a few questions to start using when you want to learn about this:

What are you focusing on?

Where are you focusing from?

What are you focusing?

The third question is what I want to address here.

You're alive, although you take this for granted most of the time, unless you've been through a life-threatening situation, had a seriously shocking emotional encounter or are just a naturally extra-sensitive person.

How do you know you're alive? By being aware, and being conscious of being aware. We could also talk about being cognizant of consciousness of being aware, but then we begin to sound like drunk philosophical lawyers, although it's true that there are many layers of consciousness and awareness. Lets' go another way, linking sensory experience to focused awareness. You usually float along on a default of habitual attention: white bread toasted, that shirt, this train, this key, that file, has to be this desk, it's mine, coffee at this time, lunch at that, my work, I know what I have to do, my home, my family, TV time, etc, etc.

The daily habit is a hard one to break. You've been doing it for a long time, even if you pay attention to complicated things. As I want to say to my son-in-law who flies Boeings, any fool can fly a Boeing. All you do is flick switches, press buttons and say "Roger" every now and then. Now who can't do that?

That which you are focusing, and using, by bringing your energy to the fore of the routine, is attention. There's only one person in charge of your attention, and that's you. Because our eyes, ears and noses are on our head, and thus a lot of attention feels to happen around these, we identify with our heads most of the time. And then, because our heart area is the one that feels very excited or very vulnerable from time to time, we point to our hearts if we are asked to point to "me". I've wondered sometimes, where a porn star would point if asked to point to the "me". Could be fun to find out.

The energy of focusing and the focusing of energy are indeed close to being the same thing. The thing common to both is decisive action. Let's try the same stunt: are decisive action and active decision the same thing? The age-old distinction between body and mind is false. You can't reduce the one to the other, neither can you separate the one from the other. You have to learn to surf, bob and bounce between them.

If, for you, the experience of living is frequently, perhaps mostly, unpleasant, as it is for many, the way to go is to beautify your being.

 

 



There are a number of places to start doing this. Daily routine is one, emotional habits another, imaginative agility a third. Intellectual versatility is the one I like, but it's not everybody's favourite. 

 

Back to the third question: what am I focusing?

 

The simplest answer is: my attention, my energy. These are the same thing. When you pay attention, you focus your emotional attention, your intellectual attention and your decisive attention. Unless you decide to attend to something else. Like the hunger in your tummy. Or is it mouth? No wait, there's a message waiting for me. I still need to go to the toilet. I'm late. What was I going to do before doing this? What's the date today? My foot hurts.

 

Focus. It's a skill of attention. It's a deliberate manipulation of energy. It's a management of self-awareness. The more you do it, the more challenging it becomes. Why do it? Life is short and then you die. Let's have another bucket of KFC. Let's have another beer.

 

What's a useful way of understanding the energy of focusing?

 

 

 

It does it automatically. When you look at what's in front of you, your eyes, or more exactly, the muscles and lenses of your eyes do what's needed without you thinking. You decide without thinking. In less than a blink.

 

What also happens, for humans, who have a weird access called imagination, is that attention obeys the words that the language part of the mind throws in. "This is the office, don't get funny." "This is my bedroom, I can do what I want." "There's no money left! It's over!" "What a wonderful world..."

 

Choose a vision and then see it. It can be as small, selfish, cruel and vicious as you want. If you can envision it, you can move towards it. Everyone goes towards what they decide without thinking. Some go towards what they decide after thinking. A few go towards what they feel and keep going even when the waves are high. Even fewer go into their thinking and feel what they think. The possibilities are myriad. Some hear beauty straight away. Some see compassion. Some smell truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 The energy that focuses your attention is not only you, it's also much more than you. Your experience, your meaning, your insight, your mind's heart is no one thing. It's not centred. Ask anyone who's been dead for a couple of hundred years. Being oneself is also a choice.

 

By now you should realize that the energy of focusing doesn't fit into words easily. In fact you can use words to focus energy, and to energize focusing. They're amazing paddles for going upstream and against the tide. But I get impatient with them. They're good friends, in themselves, but people use them to reduce, restrict and restrain the natural energy of focused attention. Ask any curious child.

 

 

 Unfocused energy doesn't go anywhere in particular. Focused energy grows, exponentially. Another blog will deal with learning how to focus energy. Unfocused energy, though, is necessary. Nothing wrong with going nowhere, slowly. One decision leads to another, and focused energy can't be reduced to business mentality, salvationism or devotion. It is what it is, and the mission in focusing is not to be slavish to clarity, but to be as clear as the energy of freedom.

 

Perhaps this comes to me vividly because living in a "free" South Africa, now, is a whole lot less free than it was when it was oppressed. It's more feasible to stand up to a bully, if you have the courage, than to correct a liar whose lies are lucrative.

 

 

 

 It's an important learning curve, choosing how to focus. It begins with the irreversible and astounding realization that the heart of your mind is what focuses, and that focusing is inevitable. Your very living is a focus, and should you never use this facility, no doubt you will die still staring blankly at nothing. That's actually not possible. A small bird on a twig is enough to register eternal meaning. That's because the reverse is also true. Indeed, words are mirrors, and that's because they're like the drops of the Victoria Falls and the Niagra Falls. If one or more hit your face, then you must have been close enough to see, and definitely close enough to hear.

 

 

 

 

"Focus" is a word. The action is limitless. The means is indefinable. The meaning is unimaginable.

 

Yet learning to do this is always possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wild Truth

The closer I get to moving from temporary life to eternal life, the more I have the sense of urgent things that need to be said.

One is that truth can't be owned.

I have spent most of my thinking life working out what ought to be thought. That's because I was brought up to find out what I ought to think.

I was a hopeless rebel. They told me I ought to think, feel and believe, but I couldn't work out what. Then, of course, I realized they didn't know, themselves. But because they were good people, I avoided a fight, as best I could,

So, ridiculously, I have spent many years fighting my own energy to avoid a fight, because I sensed it was a fight that couldn't be won.

It can't be won. So now we try a different way.

When you die, there's nowhere to go except on.

You don't just stop. That's overly modest thinking which assumes that you don't matter. Rubbish. You do.

The most vivid experiences that have come your way are an indication of how we go on. The truth is never a conceptual truth, nor a theological truth, nor a dogmatic truth.

It's no-one's truth, and the very big problem with humans is that some have tried to own it.

Try beauty.

We live on an awe-inspiring planet, a place of requirement of respect. When we experience it, as travellers do, we know it.



 

There are more indicators of how it pans out.

 

Try recognition. The key here is that if you don't respect your own body, you haven't got the path to recognize much else.

 

You go to your level, as you live, and that's where you stay unless you choose to change.

 

It's a communicative level, you connect without meaning to. Little bit scary. More comes to you than you go to.

 

You aren't in control of the patterns, neither now, nor ever.

 

 

 

From there, back to beauty.

 

Here in Africa, people film lions killing zebras. It's a sort of beauty, although not for the zebra. But the point I really want to make is that beauty isn't cosy.

 

Beauty and truth - these concepts that hover and hum like helicopters that are about to run out of fuel are wild, as our bodies suggest to our sophisticated minds.

 

When we run out of intellectual fuel, we'll feel this more sharply.

 

 

The very impulse to train human awareness is feral. They'll kill us every time we go towards a new belief that doesn't suit them.

 

Somehow, you have to overcome. Them? Us?

 

When they get wilder, as they do tend to, in spite of laws, regulations and sanctions; when their teeth show in spite of their proper words, what do we do?

 

You don't moderate emotions with intellectuality. Try sharpening intellect with emotional acuity and agility.

 

Wild truth is the stuff of heaven, I think. This intellect I've been given as a matter of neurological behaviour that I can't change at will is a case in point.

 

I'd prefer a cosy infinity, but even there, the kettle has to boil to make tea.

 

Wild truth. If the Eastern metaphor is water, the Western style is wilderness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parents, patterns and metaphors of music

We don't remember being born, we take our early years as given, we build our lives on a platform we've never recognised, because we haven't taken time or attention to check it out.

Our parents are these magical people whose influence is inescapable, though we may dare to stand up to what we have experienced.

Love between parents and children is one of the strongest instincts ever. It's also one of the most misinterpreted.

 

 



 

Most of us have the experience of responding to parents and responding to our children, and we, ourselves, are the difficult bridge between these two responses, because the construction of the bridge is not a given, but that which we create, ourselves.

 

We're born into a pattern, an emotional pattern, a pattern of belief, a cultural expectation, an economic reality, an historical sequence. We're not responsible for the pattern, yet we're responsible for how we change, don't change, ignore, take responsibility for that pattern.

 

 

You have to get personal, and start paying attention to what was going on, what was happening in respect of everything that determined the time and place into which you arrived, how it felt, what it meant, what was required.

 

 

They weren't thinking about you, they were responding for better or worse to their own arrival, development and history. They were doing the best they could in respect of their lives, hopes, disappointments, purposes, expectations, ambitions. They were responding to their own patterns of experience.

 

 

 

No-one is free from parents, biological sequence is inevitable. The implications are huge: person, purpose, life-plan, predisposition, preferences: all these come from somewhere, and the point of immediate entry is birth, that biological event in respect of which we exchange muscular contractions for emotional obligations.

 

 

Take a short test:

 

Pay attention to your life:

 

List your Mom's strongest (not best) character traits. On a scale of one to ten, rate her frequency of performing these. On a scale of one to ten do this for yourself.

 

List your Dad's strongest (not best) character traits. On a scale of one to ten, rate his frequency of performing these. On a scale of one to ten, do this for yourself.

 

 

 

Do this exercise for one mere week, thirty minutes a day, and I guarantee life-changes.

 

One's life is a pattern of meaning, and alas, this word is an empty one, unless it's filled with action. If you do something with your life other than look for superficial gratification, necessary survival, short-term joy, fun-filled distraction, your life will feel at first to be alien, then large, becoming properly purposeful.

 

Whereas entertainment is an industry, experiencing music is not really an economic activity. Music, itself, is a reflection of living. If you take a few moments to hear your life playing, the chords of your soul, the melody of your intent, you will find possibility of cadence, impertinence of melody, beauty of composition.

 

 

The pattern into which you are born is a music, playing at that time. Few feel able to change the music, some can interpret, most simply perform, leaders conduct.

 

However, the more you bring your own music into focus, the more the score changes.

 

 

 

Living one's life is like resonating within a particular chord, or cadence. You just keep on adding, either the same, or one sharp, or flat, or seventh, or minor, while your kids are adding on another semi-quaver. It's true that technology is changing extremely rapidly, yet emotions don't change as such, they merely vary the chord.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What we see is who we are, what we do is what we want, what we feel is our direction.

 

We have an instrument to play within our soul: all the notes that were given to us on arrival are ours, and the composition, counter-point and harmony are ours to create.

 





 

 

 

Avoiding a moral imperative of simplistic obedience, we will find a dilemma of authenticity.

 

What an amazing sequence of steps to gain mere movement towards truth...

 

Harmony of experience may seem difficult to achieve.

 

 

Way too much of humanity is trapped in rebellion, cruelty: destructive patterns that seem inescapable.

 

 

 



 



One of the best metaphosr of music is relief. Dissonance disappears when notes and chords connect. The soul feels it.

 

When you're free to move, in your soul and spirit, and your connection to the material world is known for what it is, a temporal connection, you can do what you want within the recognition that affords music an eternal appreciation.

One note played meaningfully can be utterly liberating...

Thus also, one life.

 

 

 



 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 



Planning to live more than one life: RIP James Thomas

Today I was shocked and saddened to learn of not only of the death but of the killing of a friend from long ago.

When death comes from natural causes, it's sad enough. Abrupt, needless death is another matter.

James Thomas used to phone me on a Wednesday evening, or a Thursday evening or even a Friday evening, in a desperate situation, looking to put a band together to play for a party or a barn dance. Sometimes a mere couple of hours' notice. I was always happy to oblige, with my bass guitar, with the prospect of a rowdy dance, good fun, decent pay, and more.

The more: I want to dwell on that, because it was more. It meant much to me,

James gave the folk a short crash course on barn dancing: "heel and toe, do-ce-do and around you go" and then the whole thing would take off picking up ridiculous speeds.

 

 

Now that he has gone on, and I am left with these deeply affectionate memories, I think about the "more" that was involved, and my thoughts are daring.

 

He was a good Christian, living the standards of the Christian proclamation. I am not the same. I ask questions that Christians don't ask and can't answer. Yet I believe that if we were to catch up with each other, right now, we wouldn't do anything else other than laugh about the madness of those years, recognize that which is more, and live for that imperative.

 

It is an eternal imperative. The church that he attended made the statement via the local leader that James looked for growth, as an imperative matter for all, and my view of his work is that it shows this, throughout.

 

I pass the billboard to Cape Town, on the left, close to Maitland, the one that reads "Don't leave a will, leave a legacy" and I like the feel of this, even though I am not a multi-millionaire.

 

Do you come back?

 

Well, "coming back" is a loaded term, sounding very Eastern to the Westerners. No, YOU don't come back, you don't get the same plate of food twice, ever, nor do you step into the same river more than once. That's why our feelings let us know what's special.

 

Yet, if you have a plan to change more than what one life inhabits, your plan is greater than it could be, and if pursued, simply greater in effect than one life.

 

Most of us desire no more than to survive and if possible, to thrive during our one life.

 

Again, re-read Brian Weiss. He has a finger on the pulse of living's summary.

 

The point is this: living is full of meaning. We participate, gently, intuitively, and given the sense of purpose, penetratingly, in this sphere.

 

The service motive is more fruitful than the profit motive.

 

Thank you, James! It will come back, all of it, until humanity itself ends...

 

 



Core Intelligence

Intelligence isn't what it used to be. Tests were designed, way back, to measure various defined intellectual capacities. In those days we measured verbal IQ, non-verbal IQ, we had stannines, bell-curves and cultural bias.

Now we have emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, ecological intelligence, intuitive intelligence and industrial intelligence. Astute books have been written about these, and I am sure more intelligences will be found as we go along.

I am interested in intelligence, because when I feel unintelligent, as I frequently do, I seek to feel intelligent again. Feeling intelligent is better than feeling unintelligent.

How do you know when you are being or acting intelligently? This question has fascinated me all my life because I was brought up in a way that encouraged me towards scholastic intelligence, spiritual obedience, economic ignorance, emotional servility, sexual idiocy and subjective clarity. I have had the good fortune of experiential influences in my life to have changed the balance of all this, and have learnt things that have changed my mind, direction, values and intelligence. I am sure that I am intelligent, but I can't prove it, not even to myself.

For a very short while I worked in the context of that well-known oxymoron, military intelligence. My job was to carry the files from the top secret cabinets to the meetings and put them away again after the meetings.  They trusted me not to open the files which was probably the height of  stupidity. What I did learn, however, was that if your enemy knew more about you than you knew about the enemy, you were likely to lose the battle.

In the functional world, intelligence relates to data-gathering, analysis, decision-making, policy, action, delivery, feedback. In the personal and interpersonal world, intelligence relates to insight, balance, wisdom, values, right action and one special core aspect which I deem to be impenetrable and inscrutable because it lies beyond the  reach of language and even thought. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this core aspect lives cheek by jowl with the mixed up sphere of emotion and instinct. These very alive imperatives remind us that we come from the belly of a very hot earth, and that our earthiness and starriness are linked in unclear ways.

This core intelligence is humbling, but not to the point of inaction. It is electrifying, often to the extent of premature commitment such as religious zeal. It can be restrictively instinctive, resulting in maternal over-protection, sexual addiction, purposeless aggression, over-identification, by way of examples.

I don't know what it is, what to call it, whether humans can conceptualize it, whether anything can be done to domesticate it.

It is an aliveness, even more, Presence, before which we had better lose all pretensions at intelligence, and learn, as quickly as possible, to relate, communicate and above all, grow in recognition. We tell ourselves strange stories, moving myths, poignant poetry and use music, architecture and art to appropriate this aspect of core intelligence that words fail to capture.

In my view, this mysterious core intelligence is a matter of grace: if you aspire too much, it evades, if you desire too much, it escapes. If your heart remembers the heat of conception with ease rather than urgency, perhaps the dream will be remembered more clearly.

Does the idea of intelligence actually apply in respect of such a view?

I think it does, if we move away from a neurologically-centred basis, and go towards subjectivity itself, realising that neurological activity and subjective awareness are not an intelligent enough combination.

The "I" of the "I", the heart of the heart, the soul in itself, the spirit, if you can catch it, the Holy Spirit, if you are prepared to recognize: these are all a little dazzling, and can't be reduced to an academic thesis or a statement of conscience.

If I believe I have captured the castle, perhaps I should go back to bringing the files.