HOW IT FEELS
Sensitivity and receptivity in the present moment require discipline and training in concentration. When a thought reflecting memories of the past appears, the only thing to be done is to simply dismiss it. Thoughts concerning past events and producing remorse have no further value once a simple analysis has clarified the unskillfulness of the thinking that produced the action of the past that is reflected by the memory of it. Since we are the heirs of our individual thoughts and actions, care should be taken to remain unattached to the desires that create such an inheritance of the unwanted. Let go of the chain of thoughts that are always arising mechanically and remain in the state of a knowing watcher, an understanding witness, in the purity of pure consciousness. Let all the automaton thoughts regarding the memory of the past and the imagination for the future just drift and subside back into their source and then just relax in a receptive attentiveness. Notice what this feels like.
The mind wants to keep habitually wandering, as it is an automaton of the metamorphic matrix we live in. Don’t let it be frustrating; it will keep on doing its thing until we learn to look directly at its functioning, to see what it is doing. Dismissing all the mental movements, they stop. They stop because we have activated our attention. Attention is not lax and undirected; it becomes actively directed. In active attention we are the director, the master; in passive attention we are the slave, the distracted, hypnoidal individual. When the mind settles down we can be really in the present.
Progress in contemplative proficiency does not mean we are getting closer and closer to a desired or projected goal because we are each that very goal we are reaching for. Its only that the one searching for the goal is already that which is being searched for. Real progress (or the fruit of the search, the possession desired) is actually an impossibility since there is no real goal to be attained and also no attainment because what is desired to be attained is already present. That is our secret real identity – pure consciousness. Stability in our real identity happens when old mental habits are dissolved away by just letting them go. They will continue to flow and arise until we learn to continue to dismiss them and let them subside. Then we are lucid and flexible, and we are able to understand.
