quotes

showing 413 Observations
taken from: How to Get Out

Can we come closer to an understanding of just what Attention is? There is an aspect of focus in it - out of a number of possibilities, out of a number of concurring happenings in the outer or inner world of a man, it seems that he can focus his attention either here or there, close or at a distance, on his sex or on his mind, on the future or on the past, on his anger or on his love. Where is the 'seat' of this attention? It appears that the seat of this attention is in what we call a man's consciousness/awareness and that this consciousness/awareness is something that stands BEHIND all other realities/functions that a man is able to perceive or cognize - that is, this consciousness/awareness is behind, more basic, more essential, more REAL than any of his functions such as his thinking, feeling or sensing.

Our attention is a certain focus of our consciousness - it can WATCH our body and sense it, it can WATCH our emotions and feel them, it can WATCH our thoughts and know them, it can WATCH the interaction of all these functions and 'stand behind them'. Our Real Self is part and parcel of this consciousness/awareness and not the ‘picture’ of ourself, framed by our picture of the world as presented to us by our mind with it's particular / peculiar / subjective / imaginary / partial / frightened / defensive / closed pseudo-personality.

Related Subjects: Attention
taken from: How to Get Out

Attention - is this or is this not the essential choice, the essential and the basic tool we have at our disposal, the handle on our consciousness, the steering-rudder of our life.

Related Subjects: Attention
taken from: How to Get Out

The significant thing we have to give is our attention. Once someone or something 'has our attention' it becomes possible for us to interact sympathetically within the dynamics of that world. The first and essential thing to GIVE, is our ATTENTION. Anything else good or useful can only follow that.

Look, there is a question as to whether what we call giving is really giving or whether in fact it is a method of taking, or even whether the giving and the taking combine without the necessity of contradiction.

Related Subjects: Attention, Give
taken from: How to Get Out

Depending on where we concentrate our attention we may feel happy or sad, optimistic or hungry, titillated or irritated. Depending on where we place our attention we may spend an hour agonizing in a problem, reliving or planning a sexual conquest or pondering on our most essential and serious concerns - each of these possibilities having it's own chemistry and kind of satisfaction as well as potential results and implications for the future.

Related Subjects: Attention
taken from: How to Get Out

Your body REQUIRES your attention in order to give you the feedback and 'goodies' IT has to offer you! 

That's the deal.

And so, likewise, with the man or woman that you are in contact with - should they have something useful and good to offer you they MUST have your attention, through which they can communicate it.

The attention, to be clean and clear, must be non-judgemental, as non-judgemental as a mother to her infant.

All judgement/criticism is suspended - an attention of interest and sensitivity. 
The baby communicates intuitively, a more developed and understanding man or woman may do that even more directly and consciously!

Related Subjects: Attention
taken from: Attention - God

ATTENTION IS FOOD

Idries Shah comments: ’If you don’t know the source of attention, it’s like not knowing where your next meal will come from.’

Look around and see how it fits. How much attention a young child needs! We’ve got three young boys up the street that can be used as an example: Take a look at them as they prance around. They’re dying for attention, and are ready to ’kill’ if necessary to get it. The infant here in this house is getting a great deal of attention. If she didn’t she would scream, make a mess, be a pain in the ass. Any child will get attention, even if it has to pee in the flowerpot. More often than not, that continues throughout peoples’ lives. If they can’t get attention with a kiss, they’ll accept a hit. If they can’t get a compliment, they’ll be satisfied with a criticism. Attention, is the issue.

You could call this the ’big secret’ of the Work! An understanding of that would be the beginning of freedom. The first ’baby’ step.

Work is essentially self-study, leading to self-knowledge - through self-observation.

Self-observation requires attention - your own attention! To start using that inner faculty is like the beginning of a pregnancy, the beginning of re-birth. The ’essential you’ comes alive again, slowly but surely.

Surely? Yes, surely - you begin to utilize the ’light of attention’. You had always demanded that attention come to you -now you realize that it must come from you!

Related Subjects: Attention
taken from: Talk with Three Sisters

’ANXIETY, PLEASE!’ You have to regard it as a GIFT, because it’s got a tremendous energy reserve in it. You can’t think yourself out of that in a million years. You can take a drug, you can be a workaholic, you can be a fanatic in something, you can be artistic, artistic, artistic, but that does not clear it up.
That’s all running away from this anxiety. If you go THROUGH the anxiety, if you accept the anxiety, if you say, ’Anxiety, please’, then you absorb/transform that energy into your SELF. Not as a bad thing, as a reality. Ah, if it was so simple!
Behind the anxiety is YOU.
The more you are YOURSELF, the more your OVERVIEW, the more you are attractive in the REAL sense. There is nothing more attractive than your PRESENCE, behind the anxiety. The anxiety maintains itself only when you struggle with it. If you don’t struggle with it, it’s just ENERGY. And that energy, with attention, transforms, actually!

Related Subjects: Anxiety
taken from: Talk with Three Sisters

No reasoning is going to get you out of all this business. Only if you get BEHIND it. There you have an overview. Then you can see what’s possible, or not. NOT from anxiety. You CANNOT be intelligent from anxiety. How about that one? You cannot be intelligent, you cannot be good, other than in a sentimental bullshit way, and you can’t be serious, from anxiety. It’s your job to FEEL it, and find yourself behind it, or above it.

Related Subjects: Anxiety
taken from: What's the why of your wants

Your WHY is your AIM, is your MEANING, is your FOCUS. You must get it clear in your head. Also in your heart.

Related Subjects: Aim, Why
taken from: What's the why of your wants

Authentic Spiritual Work, Religions or Teachings are means, functional in life, which allow you to pursue an AIM.

Related Subjects: Aim

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