captive attention transitioning to free awareness

[Unseeking Seeker]

Meditation or prayer dissolves time in that we lose the sense of time when engaged in it. True. However if we look at any form of attention or thought a little deeper, we will find that all other activities at any frequency level also dissolve time. Let us consider our different attention modes;

Tamas or the stupor mode; random thoughts we don’t know from where and how, prevent us from being in the here and now.

Rajas or the desire mode; plagued by fear and consumed by desire bound to the ego’s chain, life is out of our control in unending pain.

Satva or the pristine mode; in meditation or prayer, we uncover the manifestation of the divine energy within layer by layer.

Each of the modes in which our attention is held is not a fixed frequency but has a certain bandwidth. Lower Tamas is slothful while the upper Tamas nurtures deceit and low cunning. The lower Rajas is the domain of lust, anger and animal like domination while the upper Rajas mode expresses greed, vanity, self serving instincts and feeds on ephemeral fears and desires. The lower Satva mode leans towards altruism, sensitivity and thoughtfulness for others and the upper Satva frequency is the closest to our pristine soul consciousness state where we contemplate, meditate and surrender to the divine in a prayerful attitude.

While the upper Satva orientation is the actual orientation to get to, each attention mode frequency however dissolves time when we are in it, in that we are absorbed in the activity while engaged in it and can contemplate or reflect on our state of consciousness only when the energy devoted to that activity is expended, which happens only when we emerge out of that state. This is why when we are overpowered by anger or lust, we give vent to our emotion and only later have remorse. Likewise when engaged in meditation or prayer, we are lost in the activity and only when we ‘return’ to our lower state of natural equilibrium do we give a mental shape in the form of memory to the experience we had as perceived by our body parameters.

In other words, we are in a state of free awareness only when we observe ourselves from a neutral vantage point aware that we are observing and at the same time also experiencing. We are simultaneously both the observer and the observed. This state of free awareness is feasible only in the uppermost regions of the Satva mode.

Taking meditation then, for which the prerequisites are ego free peaked attention within in childlike wonder, unexpectant and yet ready, there being no doer, we merely position our orientation in that manner, observing and also experiencing. When we ‘return’ to our natural lower state, the attempt to categorise the experience as perceived by our lower body consciousness colours or distorts the ‘free state’ of the experience when we were in that mode. As such, during our next meditation, we tend to be no longer free in the absolute sense, since we anticipate the experience before engaging in it.

Thought is the nemesis and thought is always a step behind the present moment in which the divine energy manifests.

The self created blockade imposed by our default setting to consign all experiences to memory may be taken as a double edged sword. The memory makes us know that we have known which is a plus but at the same time the coloured and diluted perception of the original pristine experience tends to divert us somewhat from the ineffable aspect of the moment of ignition within unless we still our consciousness each time successfully and attain the soul observing and body experiencing mode in a detached non-doer unified orientation. A singularity within the duality.

Rephrased, we may say that thought positions us at the gateway and then rests, handing over the baton of awareness to the heart, where all emotions and feelings reside and from that centre we may actually live and be the experience. The transition from the head to the heart must be clean and complete. If it is not, the divine manifestations intensity within us will be dilute.

True control then is the innate ability to use and rest the instrument of thought totally and completely as of our choosing and transition to the realm of feeling at a higher frequency level at which our thought has deposited us to enable us to engage in the experience. At the relatively higher frequency levels we are no longer ‘lost’ in the attention held therein since we are free as the observer observing and the body experiencing simultaneously.

Practice makes perfect. Let us surrender and just be. With divine assistance.