On a recent retreat, one of the guides said, “Focus attention, expand awareness,” or at least that’s what I heard. This guidance landed and immediately took root in consciousness. Here’s some of the background:
There’s been a “good student” part of this personality for most of my life, and when I started awareness practice this identity became the pseudo Zen master, monitoring practice, setting standards and pouring on self-hate when standards weren’t met. There was always pressure to do more and nothing was ever good enough. Not a lot of freedom in this, but plenty of suffering.
The mentor suggested a practice a few weeks ago: write down the names of a few beings each morning and dedicate awareness practice to them. I noticed this began to loosen the identity of “I am sitting.” On retreat, with guidance, “Who's sitting” morphed into “what is sitting,” then “awareness sits.”
With the attitude of mind that “Awareness practices,” conscious, compassionate awareness directs attention to the breath, tells the one who practices, “You can do this,” and gives kind, gentle reminders when distracted. This is so different from the effort made in the past to “do it right.”
On the last evening of retreat, the voices began a campaign to suck all the life energy out of this human. As I listened to the voices, I could feel myself shrinking. A moment of grace…I could see what was happening and recognized I had a choice. “I’m going to report what the voices are doing right now.” And as I prepared to make gasshō, I began tuning into what Sangha was saying, (which had only been background noise while in the conversation with conditioned mind), and heard, “We don’t have to report on what conditioning is doing. We know what it says, we can just ignore it, put attention elsewhere."
I could feel the truth of this, and in that environment, after a week of intensive practice, there was sufficient trust and willingness and faith to just drop the conversation. I could see how it was necessary to push past the old habit of mind and tolerate the discomfort of letting go in order to be present and come back to the senses. I asked the Mentor to show me what was true about my experiences on retreat. Many insights and major shifts in awareness had taken place, and I began to feel expansive again.
I had an experience of facing down the Dragon of Fear and Doubt, and that’s what I reported to Sangha, a practice success. Life has been guiding this being all along, and ego can no longer take credit.
Gassho
Ramita