In the Movement of Attention, can You lose Your Self?

Yes, yes.

Let’s see if I can help you with this. Let’s see, this is a good way to start Satsang. So, with the movement of attention, what happens? What happened just in the pure perception, just in the movement of attention? Can you lose yourself or is the Self not apparent to you because of that?

Yes, ok, so what is the other mode of attention, where would you keep it? No stress, we’re just exploring together as friends. So we say that ok, now my attention is going this way, you see, rather than some this way and then in the movement of that attention this way or that way, one is better than the other. Now, if your attention was inside, then where does it go?

So now, as your attention is outside on your computer or phone, have you lost Awareness?

Where can you send it in your room so that you could lose this Awareness of Awareness, as you say it?

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes. I’ll tell you a secret, ok? Now, the attention can only go out. There is no “in“ for the attention to go to. Wherever attention may go, we can call that “out“. So in the absence of perception, in the absence of sensation, your attention is still on the dark empty space. Isn’t it? So you may say that “I find it easier when my attention is on my Being“. You may say that. But actually what you’re then saying is that “it’s on the core of my Being or that which feels like the essence of my Being, the Source of all this light is my Presence itself, and attention feels more res{ul that way.“ But actually it’s always only traversing your Being. It can never go outside of you. It is only possible when you create a notional boundary around yourself, which is that you take these body sensations to be your boundary.

So now I want to ask you: as your attention is in front of you, are there only perceptions or do you recognize naturally something else as well?

Yes, yes. Do you recognize only the perceptions? As you are just letting your attention go free, are there only perceptions here or is there something beyond perception as well?

And can that be perceived?

Yes! This is the thing. (smiling) The unperceivable recognition, which is only possible to do with the Self.

It’s impossible to recognize it any other way. So that is how insight, intuitive insight about your own Self, which is also called Self-Knowledge, is different from wordly knowledge or perceptual knowledge.

You see this? Now, is it independent of where your attention is or is it dependent on where your attention is?

It’s not dependent. You see? Now, but it seems dependent on one thing, seems dependent, “seems“ is the operative word there. What does it seem dependent on? It seems dependent on your identification. So if you were to identify, then it seems like that Self-Knowledge goes into the background somehow, although it really doesn’t. But Consciousness has given itself the ability for it to seem as if it does.

They are subtle points and I’m happy to go through it throughout Satsang today, but this is very important. So what can happen is that although in Reality nothing changes, ignorance or misidentification or taking yourself to be the ego is when you identify with a notion, with a thought.

So just with pure attention or pure perception it is not possible to be ignorant or mental or mindy or egotistical. So this is the master key because then you’re allowed to live your life just like all the sages are living their lives without having to put any sort of constraints on their attention.

Yes. Now, one more Hp I will give you is that...have you heard of the metaphor of the thief that I’ve been sharing?

So like we just saw, nothing really gets in the way, except this ignorance and ignorance only comes from the mind, isn’t it?

So now, if the job is to not fall for this trick or to catch this thief, do you feel it’s a good idea to call up the thief and say: “hey, where are you at? (you know?) I want to come and catch you.“ Do you think that will work out well?

No, it won’t work out, because it is not the thief that is ready to surrender. The thief only wants to preserve itself and not only does it want to preserve itself, it also wants to dominate. It wants to win, it wants to be the only one that is ruling this world. So to go to the mind, to get a diagnosis about what is happening to us, is like calling the thief saying, “I want to catch you. Can you tell me your address, please?“ And that will not work out well. So then if our presumptions about what is happening to us are coming from the same source, then how credible is that? See? And this is the number one reason that most spiritual seekers don’t become spiritual finders. Because the mind keeps us on this trip, keeps us on this treadmill saying, “ah, it was like this then, it is like this now“. But it is the thief pretending to give you the way to catch the thief, but it’s never going to.