REALLY PAYING ATTENTION 2

The speaker talks about the importance of paying attention and experiencing love. They explain that when we truly pay attention to something, we realize there is no separation between us and that thing, leading to a sense of oneness and love. They emphasize that this experience is beyond words and can only be truly understood through direct experience. They also discuss the practical benefits of this experience, such as questioning our identity and ego, and choosing love over fear and negativity. The speaker suggests that those seeking something more in life will resonate with these ideas and that settling for mediocrity is risky and unsatisfying. Sitting here, watching branches sway. Sitting here, on an ordinary day. Nothing seems to change, but everything does, as I sit here, on an ordinary day. How extraordinary. Hi everybody. In my last podcast, I talked about really paying attention, in the way that a baby pays attention. And I said that I would talk more about really paying attention, because it is such a useful skill. It is a skill that can actually uproot the cause of all suffering that our body-mind is rooted in. But it is not just a skill. It is actually a state of consciousness. When you stop filling your mind with words, images, sounds, memories, imaginings, and so on, and instead peer into the very heart of a thing, whether that thing is an object like a tree, or a skill in action, or an empty page, or a painful memory. When you peer right into the very core of it, you will find, and wait for this, you will find that there is no distance between you and it. In other words, no separation. And this is the experience of love, or what some people will describe as oneness. And you will come away from the experience knowing that separation, this sense of separation that we are constantly experiencing. You just have to open your eyes to look at things around you and have the sense that you and that thing are not one. There is distance between you, and that is fair enough. It is what we see through our physical senses. But it is important to know that there is an underlying reality to this. And in that underlying reality, this separation is but an illusion. And within that illusion, then, is the sense of good and bad, right and wrong, and so on and so forth. And we will then experience, when we really pay attention, and this sense of separation is removed, it falls away because it is an illusion. Then what we will also realize is that nothing is either bad or good, marvelous or awful, right or wrong, past or future or present. All these are distortions, they are tensions, they are contradictions, they are oppositions, they are perceptions. All of them dissolve into this sublime experience of simply being. You know, when you look at something with love, you are looking at it in love. And when you look at something in love, what you see is love. I know it seems like I am talking in riddles and abstractions here. And really, the reason for that is because these things are so poorly communicated through words, through language. These things can only be experienced. Okay, so I just want to lay down that disclaimer. If it does sound abstract and confusing or unreal or unrealistic to you or, you know, just inaccessible, then understand it is not because these things, what I am talking about, isn't true and real. It's only because of the inability to communicate the experience with words. And the only way we can know whether this is true or not is to give ourselves permission to enter into such an experience. You know, we can't actually construe or construct or engineer the experience, but we can lay the ground for it. And I will be talking a little bit more about that in a minute. But as I was saying, when you look at something with love, you are looking at it in love. And when you look at it in love, what you see is love. It would be as if the thing you are looking at dissolves into love and becomes love. But really what is happening is that when we switch from the lens of the ego to the lens of love, or rather to the state of love, then all illusions fall away because love is truth. And only truth then will remain standing. So, you are more than likely to be asking, OK, what the heck is this love that you are talking about, Lucy, and that we supposedly can experience? I mean, you know, we use the word love all the time and we think we know what it means. You know, we have got a pretty good idea, but it seems like you are talking about something else. Well, let me make it just clear again, as I said, the words that I use are at best, you know, they are pointers. And rather poor and ineffective pointers at that. So, please keep that in mind. And so, what I am trying to say is that when people come away from the experience of love by truly paying attention, for instance, sometimes they are speechless. There is neither a desire to say anything, nor the ability to say anything. And sometimes they might describe the experience as one of bliss, of boundlessness, of peace, of feeling whole, feeling complete, of wanting nothing, of oneness. And if they have the words for it, they might also say that their solid sense of a personal and physical self, a bodily self, was no longer there. OK, so you might be wondering, OK, great, so what is the use of such an experience? It sounds really nice, and sure, it would be great to experience it, maybe at least once, but really, what useful and practical purpose does such an experience serve? OK, so I am going to give you a few reasons why it would be useful to do this. When you have such an experience, you can no longer honestly claim that you are nothing more than your body, or that you are even a body. Now that is a big deal. And in future podcasts, I will go into why it is such a big deal. Also, when you have such an experience, you are more inclined to ask, who am I really? And you know, this is a question that is probably the most liberating question a human can ever ask. When you have the experience of love, by really paying attention, you are more inclined to question why you take your body-mind so seriously, and why you identify so strongly with it. Also, you become less likely to take your body-mind so seriously. So you question, and then you become, you know, just very spontaneously, you start taking your body-mind less and less seriously. In other words, you start taking your ego less seriously, and you will find yourself not only challenging your ego, but over time, not even engaging with it. Because you continue to notice it, but when you notice it, you will neither take its word as true, nor will you bother to invest any energy in having a quarrel with it, in trying to reason with it, in trying to massage it, in trying to placate it, in trying to negotiate it, which is something that, my goodness, we are all, almost 24-7, preoccupied with. And instead of that, you will, here's the important thing, you will let it show you everything that love is not. Let me say that again. You will let it show you everything that love is not. In other words, everything that you are not. So that you can keep making the choice to return to love. And what are you not? Just to restate that. What are you not? You're not your body-mind. You're not your thoughts. You're not your ideas. You're not your beliefs. You're not your perceptions, etc., etc. I've said this before. So, that's just to remind us, the experience of really paying attention, and therefore of love, is you will not only become more and more familiar with the nature of your ego, but in that familiarity, you will begin to recognize more and more who and what you are not. And I said that in that whole process, what you will start doing is you will become more and more aware of the choice in any given moment to return to love. Instead of staying rooted and paralyzed and fearfully motivated in the egoic consciousness. And when you return to love, it is essentially what we mean by becoming present. Instead of engaging in the ego's stories, its melodramas, its judgments and demands, its ultimatums, its neediness, its unworthiness, its jealousy, its anger, its hatred, its grievances, etc., etc., etc. So, have I given you enough reasons to persuade you that really paying attention is a really good practice? Okay, now I guess you might be thinking, you know, Luz, there are a lot of people who don't do this and they get by. They seem to be doing just fine. Why should I bother? Great question. And my best answer to this question is this. Why are you here? Why are you watching or listening to a podcast like this? And why do you keep looking for other videos or podcasts or books that somehow give a similar message? I think that you, like many others, are seeking something more. Something more substantial, more reliable, more reflective of the truth. That's what I think. And you know, I have found that for some people, like you and me, once we catch a wisp of something wonderful, a glimpse of something truly magnificent, we cannot unsee it or unfeel it or unknow it. We cannot simply push it aside and forget it, though goodness knows many of us keep trying to. But that signal, it keeps vibrating within us. In fact, it has never stopped vibrating. And it catches up with us sooner or later, often following more suffering in our lives. You know, more crises, more drama, more disappointment, more fear, more loneliness, more unworthiness, more failure, more not having what we truly want. Do you know what I'm getting at? People like us are not satisfied with just getting by, with just doing fine. You know? We've come to see that our attempts to get by or to just be fine are in fact fraught with risk every step of the way. That's right. That's right. We have come to see that our attempts to get by are risky every step of the way. And I know it sounds crazy, but that's the irony of it. That's the irony of it. The more you try to stay safe, the more you try to stay within your comfort zone, the more likely you're going to find yourself feeling unsafe. The more likely you're going to find yourself being forced out of your comfort zone. Why? Because so much of your attention is being given to what you don't want, rather than what you truly want, to what is truly and eternally true, which is our unchanging nature, which is love, which is life. And you know, it's because we sense, in what I call that truth place within us, that nothing less will do. Why? Because that's the only way we will actually know peace, no joy, no freedom, no love, no life. It's the only way we're going to be truly alive. We just know this instinctively. And you know, this natural and unshakable yearning might, at first, begin as an obsession. Because for a while, sometimes even for a very long time, we may feed it with our fervor, our relentless pursuit to get to the truth. We'll seek our books, teachers, videos, programs, courses, this, that, and the other. And often, without realizing it, we'll convince ourselves that the more we strive for it, the greater our chance of finding this truth, the answer to all our problems, all our questions, once and forever, the end of all our suffering. But you know what? Striving is not the way. And eventually, we'll come to see this. And then, we'll start to ease off, to be a little bit more relaxed about the whole thing. We'll come to understand that we cannot force truth to reveal itself. How can you, when truth is all there is? It's like the fish asking the water to reveal itself to it. You know what I mean? Okay. So, what do we do? We learn how to allow truth. You know, babies, the most natural built-in skill that we all have, and which is most noticeable in babies, is their ability to simply allow. They're just there, and they just allow whatever is. You know? So, we learn how to allow truth. We learn how to lay the ground that helps us listen for truth. We learn to calm our mind and direct our attention in a very particular way. We learn to be present, because that's the only so-called time that truth inhabits. And we learn to be consistent with the practice of being in this state of readiness. We learn to be consistent with laying the ground, in other words, creating the conditions for this to happen. And all the while, life goes on, and things keep changing. For instance, we are less inclined to see ourselves as separate from life. Instead, we see ourselves as life. So then, rather than see things as happening to us, we get that things, including ourselves and the events, situations and problems that arise, are simply modulations of life. They don't threaten us. How can they? When we are the very life in which all of it is happening. And that is a huge shift, because we become less and less affected by the events in life. Less and less victims of so-called events in life. And less and less pulled into their fourth field. It's not that we are separate from them. On the contrary, it's because they are a part of us, our own modulations, that the sense of separation disappears. And with it, the fear, the anxiety, the loneliness, the blame, the judgment, the comparing, the resistance. Really paying attention allows the distance between you and something, whether it's an object, a person, a situation, a problem. It allows the distance between you and it to disappear. And in this state of no separation, you cannot possibly feel threatened. Instead, all the defenses, the resistances you had previously set up against this thing, fall away. And you become the open field of awareness that you truly are. Where the perfect response to this, whatever particular modulation of consciousness is happening, can happen. The perfect response can happen spontaneously, responsively, not reactively, and without effort. Now, some people will describe this as an intuition, or a solution to a problem, or an insight. And yes, all of these are words we use for what is, to me, essentially a response of love. Which is a response of truth. And here is something that also happens. Most of us will try to massage and stretch and bend the ego's self-preserving intimations and motivations to appear as if they are of love. Of truth. Of truth. In fact, and this is helpful to know, and we want to keep this in mind, it's not us. It is this ego state of consciousness. This habituated consciousness that does this. So we needn't take it personally. If we understand that the ego, which is a state of consciousness that identifies as a personal, separated body-mind, is not who we truly are, what we can do is to then really pay attention to its self-preserving intimations and motivations. And when you do that, the egoic habits of judging, comparing, labeling, blaming, and so on, they just fall away. And so, what at first may have appeared distasteful, undesirable, bad, wrong, or problematic, now provides us with a direct pathway, a direct pathway to truth, to love, to our unseparated essential self. You know, when we hear that popular saying that the obstacle is the way, this is one of the ways in which we can experience the truth of it. This meaning really paying attention. Okay, so let me finish with a recap. Here are the key points. Number one, really paying attention is something that babies naturally, spontaneously, and effortlessly do. Number two, we have the same ability. It has never been lost because what is natural can never be destroyed nor enhanced. Number three, we can practice this skill. We can lay the ground to enter into this state of consciousness, which essentially is to awaken our minds to this ability that we already possess, this really paying attention ability and seeing right into the core of anything and everything, especially those things that we are troubled by. Number four, the more we practice really paying attention, the more we live with ease, without effort and struggle, with less suffering. Number five, the more we practice this skill, the less we identify with our body-mind, and the more we live from our true, essential, loving, free, and whole nature. Number six, we can practice really paying attention with anything and everything, including the activities we engage in routinely, as well as the problems and situations we encounter. The problem or the situation or activity provides us with a direct path into our true nature, when we are really paying attention to it. That is why it is said, the obstacle is the way. And finally, number eight, when we live less and less as the eagle, and more and more as our true nature, which is love, which is truth, which is life, we cannot but live in its limitlessness, its boundlessness, its greatness, its magnificence, its freedom, its abundance, and its natural well-being. Okay, I'm going to leave it at that for this podcast. I wonder what your thoughts are, how you've been reacting to what you've heard. Please share your thoughts with me. Even your questions, if you like, whether you agree or disagree, I would love to read your comments. And I want to finish by wishing you much love, and may your heart beat with the rhythm of truth. Everybody, I know it's so easy to forget, I do it myself so often, but please, if you did like this video, do hit the like button, do subscribe, do share, and most of all, please leave a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you so much. Learn everything new as I sit here on an ordinary day. How extraordinary.