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When an apple falls from a tree, it does so in a single moment.
One moment on the tree, the next moment, not on the tree.
Can we point to a single factor that is responsible for the falling, or would it be more correct to suggest that the falling was made possible by a countless number of unknown factors and conditions?
We may say summarily that it was only one condition i.e. the ripeness, but that would be to ignore more specific conditions, such as warmth, moisture, soil, freedom from pests and frost, etc.
Would it be more accurate to say the whole universe conspired in the falling of the apple?
I have come to see that the dynamics of waking up are so massive that to imagine one could narrow the process down into a predictable formula or prescription is absurd. That said, it appears to me that certain factors can certainly facilitate waking up. I like to see the waking up process as one that can be facilitated and supported.
This means that we cannot force ourselves to wake up, but we may create conditions in which it is far more likely to happen.
Conditions in this sense means creating environments that support, rather than undermine, the possibility of change.
The universe is uncaused, like a net of jewels in which
each is only the reflection of all the others in a fantastic
interrelated harmony without end.
~ Ramesh Balsekar
You are invited to an environment that will be created to facilitate and support your awakening. Details are here.
Attention is the most precious commodity in the world today,
and when you’ve got it, you’d better use it effectively.
~ Perry Marshall
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again,
is the very root of judgment, character, and will. . . .
An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
~ William James
In the power of fixing the attention
lies the most precious of the intellectual habits.
~ Robert Hall
Permit me to say without reservation that if all people were attentive,
if they would undertake to be attentive every moment of their lives,
they would discover the world anew.
They would suddenly see that the world is entirely different
from what they had believed it to be.
~ Jacques Lusseyran
The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
~ Henry Miller
Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.
~ Jose Ortega y Gasset
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
~ Samuel Johnson
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,
which distract our attention from serious things.
They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
~ Henry David Thoreau
The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.
~ Simone Weil
Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with
the gift of your attention.
~ Jim Rohn
Everyone I know has attention deficit,
and they say it with great pride.
It’s a bad time to be right.
~ Joni Mitchell
Attention makes the genius; all learning, fancy, and science depend upon it.
Newton traced back his discoveries to its unwearied employment.
It builds bridges, opens new worlds, and heals diseases;
without it taste is useless and the beauties of literature are unobserved.
~ Robert Aris Willmott
The quality of one’s life depends on the quality of attention.
Whatever you pay attention to will grow more important in your life.
~ Deepak Chopra
Just being awake, alert, attentive is no easy matter.
I think it is the greatest spiritual challenge that we face.
~ Diana L. Eck
To see the preciousness of all things,
we must bring our full attention to life.
~ Jack Kornfield
Attention is the intention to live without reservation in the here-and-now.
~ Timothy Miller
For lack of attention
a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
~ Evelyn Underhill
Just remember that those things that get attention flourish.
~ Victoria Moran
Attention is the most basic form of Love
~ John Tarrant
One day a man of the people said to the Zen master Ikkyu:
“Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?”
Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.”
“Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more?”
Ikkyu then wrote twice running: “Attention. Attention.”
“Well,” remarked the man rather irritably, “I really don’t see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written.”
Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running:
“Attention. Attention. Attention.”
Half angered, the man declared: “What does that word attention mean anyway?”
And Ikkyu answered, gently: “Attention means attention.”
The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.
~ Richard Moss
Genius is nothing but continued attention.
~ Claude Adrien Helvetius
You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one.
Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own.
It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.
~ Paulo Coelho
Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat.
Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake.
He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.
~ Chuck Palahniuk
The best way to forget ones self is to look at the world with attention and love.
~ Red Auerbach
Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
~ Richard Whately
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries,
it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.
~ Isaac Newton
Creative people are all there, totally immersed,
fascinated and absorbed in the present,
in the current situation, in the here-now,
with the matter-in-hand.
~ Abraham Maslow
I never knew any man cured of inattention.
~ Jonathan Swift
As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two
vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and
concentrate your force on one or a few points.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
In my new book, Waking Up To Life! I suggest that as you read these words in this moment, your eyes are open and moving along the length of this sentence.
Your surroundings, whatever they are, are probably not central to your experience. If you are sitting, you are probably unaware of the feeling of your butt in a chair.
The taste of your nasty tongue is not an obvious part of your experience. Oftentimes when you watch TV or read a book, you become so involved that you lose awareness of everything else. I’m sure you would agree that, at this moment, there are many details that are lying outside of awareness of your total possible experience. No big deal.
If we were to look at a spectrum of awakeness, on one end of the spectrum your eyes are either open or closed and you are completely unaware and oblivious.
At this end of the spectrum your attention to experience is absent, you are functioning on autopilot, your actions are performed mechanically and without awareness, and you are disconnected from your experience of being alive.
Your experience is hazy, your attention is weak and easily distracted and you are prone to becoming totally unaware, lost in random thought and emotional extremes. We will call this end of the spectrum, asleep.
At the other end of the spectrum you are completely aware of your surroundings, alert and responsive to your environment.
There is an energetic quality in your attention and you maintain contact with your direct experience. There is a spaciousness in your awareness. You are aware and you are aware that you are aware. We will call this end of the spectrum awake.
If I were to suggest you wake up or be as aware as you can be, I would guess that you would be able to become more attentive and alert. You might realize that you are holding this book, you are reading words and that these words are attempting to point you toward your present experience with full awareness, attention and alertness. You might become aware of more of your total possible experience and what that is like.
In most moments, to varying degrees, you probably fall somewhere on the asleep side of the spectrum. This means you are not completely asleep and oblivious, yet you are also not awake and aware. Most people agree that asleep is how they spend many of their waking hours, with alternating periods of being energetically awake and longer periods of being obliviously asleep in bed.
If we were to look even more closely at this, let’s look at a twenty-four hour day. Most of us are in bed six to eight hours or one quarter to one third of our lives. That leaves sixteen to eighteen hours, two thirds to three quarters of our lives, for potential awake time in the way I have utlined above.
Take a moment now to consider how much of that time you spend truly awake. This is important to look at, because when you see your true state of affairs by understanding how little time you spend actually awake, a natural sense of urgency may arise that is valuable in helping you to establish a daily practice and dedication to continued awakening.
Would it be safe to say that out of a twenty-four hour day you spend eight in bed asleep, fifteen hours on auto pilot and an hour of accidentally being connected to the immediacy of your life ? That’s a lot of sleep time hmm?
If this is accurate no worries. It gives you the opportunity for the most dramatic awakening.
I’m not asleep… but that doesn’t mean I’m awake.
~ Author Unknown
The Zen Swack! Stick
Having only recently returned from Scotland I have concluded that the drivers there are far superior to the drivers in Canada.
Why?
Well, for starters…
If you don’t pay attention to your driving in Scotland, you will either go over a cliff or be run off the road. Either way you may be dead.
The roads are so narrow, and the cliffs are so steep, that a moment of inattention might be your last.
I didn’t see anyone driving with a cell phone to their ear.
I don’t think I saw anyone driving with a smoke in their hand.
I don’t think I saw anyone driving with a Tim Horton’s in their hand.
In Canada everyone has a cell to their ear while driving. Many also have a smoke, a coffee, or both in their hands. Many of these are teenagers, barely skillful enough to drive period, much less with divided attention
The roads are so wide open and straight that there seems to be little demand for attention.
Our desire for convenience and safety has disconnected us from our environment.
We don’t pay attention because it seems like we don’t have to.
Rather than pay attention, wear a helmet for safety.
Rather than pay attention to accuracy, throw it away and start over.
Rather than pay attention to what you are doing, do it on autopilot.
Rather than pay attention to reality, create your own reality.
Rather than pay attention to what’s at hand, multi-task.
Rather than pay attention to Life, live in Lala land .
Plugged into every orfice, we are wired into a world that is far far removed from the reality of Life.
Multitasking.
Undue Care and Attention.
Attention Deficit.
Divided Attention.
Continuous Partial Attention.
Dreamworld.
Robot Life.
Zobified.
Lala land.
Asleep.
Is It Time For You To Get Serious?
An Invitation To The Path Of Understanding.
I’ve now lived long enough, suffered enough, survived enough adventures, and helped enough other clueless people get a clue or, ‘understand’… that I can safely say everyone has a handful of moments in their life that shape who they are and how their life will unfold.
Most of my own life-changing moments involved some sort of crisis or problem.
People raised with a silver spoon in their yap seldom develop that fire-in-the-gut, pain induced curiosity necessary to look closely at who they are and what life is. However, being in pain does not necessarily produce a life-changing moment. Many suffer while embedding themselves deeper and deeper into the muck and mire of personal patterns, dramas and sleep induced insanity.
Heck, most folks seem content to slog through their entire existence sleepwalking on autopilot. Their idea of “stepping outside the rat-race” is to dream about winning the lottery. I doubt very many of these magical thinkers are on my mailing list, though. So I think it’s safe to assume that you will get what I’m about to share regarding “life changing moments”.
Here is what I’m talking about: There are certain decisions required of the person who yearns for more. The moment you realize that no one is gonna give you anything… and that simply wishing and hoping to suddenly understand your life, is futile… you are ripe for falling from the proverbial tree of banality. (I made up, ‘the tree of banality’, so it’s hardly proverbial!)
If you truly crave a deep understanding beyond what you’re experiencing now… you are eventually gonna have to take a step. You can’t start any journey without taking that first step and even a simple action like taking a first step can be monstrous, especially if that step is off a cliff. Most people never take that first step.
A turning point in my life occurred when I realized I could only go so far… on my own. I needed to step off that cliff. I needed help. I needed some personal mentoring.
So I made the decision to seek out people who knew what I didn’t know yet… and learn from them. Finding those people was difficult, because there weren’t many seminars on ‘how to understand what is really real’ at the time. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack (and not even being clear on where the haystack was in the first place.) However, finding a mentor was not an actual “problem”. It was just a task.
The BIG moment… was making that decision to go after additional education via a mentor.
You never forget moments like that. One second before your mind “clicks”, you are the same old person you’ve been for years. Then, a second AFTER that decision, you are someone new. It’s like breathing deep after a lifetime of clenched, shallow breathing. Or like turning on a light after stumbling around in the dark for years.
The adventure starts the moment you take that step.
Mentoring was critical to my success. Much of my understanding would NOT have come my way without mentoring. I may have had a nice little life as a professional, step-dad, son, brother, human being, whatever… but I may have never tasted the joys of deep understanding. This is true of every single person I know of, who has broken the code on understanding, wisdom and freedom. They struggled, yes… but they also eagerly sought out teachers who could shortcut the process. Every – single – person – I – know.
Mentoring is THAT important.
If you are hovering around your own “life changing” moment of decision… wondering where you should turn to start your own big adventure… then I want to be absolutely positive I’ve done all I can to alert you to the opportunity I’ve created here.
You may have seen a private email from my office about this, or read about it in the Wake Up Calls newsletter, or heard about it from a friend. Maybe you’ve met me and could tell I am to some degree beyond you, awake.
If you’re ready to get serious about taking your life off “hold”, and starting the adventure that will define who you are and what you will accomplish for the rest of your days… then you MUST check this opportunity out… I am willing to mentor you, IF you want a better life.
It’s okay not to “want” a better life. You may be content already. Or, like most folks, you may be too terrified of change, and have such a weak heart that new opportunities really would challenge your health. There are all kinds of very excellent reasons why you don’t want anything new to happen in your life. Only you know if that itch deep inside is serious or not.
Personally, I can tell you that taking the path of understanding is a blast that never stops invigorating your life. No matter how much you believe things suck now, the facts are these:
We live in a world of sleepwalkers, in a society of mediocrity, where there is little desire for understanding, only a hope for some relief and comfort between fixes of pleasure and inevitable pain. (I won’t even touch on the whole, ‘impending death’ thing here)
And yet… yet… the world is a vast feast… even though most people are starving for a clue. I am inviting you to step up to the smörgåsbord of life…. and feast.
Feast on your life.
I’m not talking about mindless consumption and shallow gluttony here. I talking about feasting on your own deep life experience… your own fleeting chance to really live the one life you have, right NOW!
A whole new, more exciting and magical life awaits your decision to pursue it. And if you believe you can learn from me, the opportunity is here. I have no idea how long I’ll keep these mentoring programs open. But they’re available right now… if you’re ready to make a decision.
I cherish those moments of change I’ve experienced. Once I realized I had to step off the cliff — because nothing happens without that step — it all fell into place. We only get one go-round in life. You’ll never get yesterday back to replay… and tomorrow is a blank reel of film, waiting for you to wake up enough to write the script.
And damn, but it’s FUN when you finally understand who you are and how life works.
Understanding is ALL. You ready to step off that cliff?
If it’s your time, then congratulations. I invite you to check out the details, call me at 403.302.2523 or email me, so we can discuss your decision. My availability is quite limited these days, unless you are a client. Then it’s wide open to you. I’ll be waiting at the bottom of that cliff, and together we will feast upon life.
Aaron
