A matter of focus

Deep down, everyone wants Freedom. Inside everyone, there is a need to know what is Real, what is True. So, there is an internal motivation towards this Awakening, towards the end of suffering and of all this confusion the mind has been living in.

The whole matter is that, in general, since your childhood, you are paying too much attention to the thoughts. I am not saying you are attentive to thoughts, but that you are paying much attention to them, giving much confidence to them. You do it because deep down you believe they are saying something very important about who you are. But they aren’t. So you are in the wrong direction.

Thoughts inside you spin around an idea: the idea of who you are. Some people will say there is nothing you can do to break this vicious circle. Here is a paradox:  this is partly truth and partly not truth.

It is untrue that there is nothing you can do to Awake. You can notice the circular and repetitive movement of the thought, and then you will find out it is memory and imagination. It is memory within the imagination and the imagination making use of memory. You can look at this process.

In this sense, there is something you can do, to become aware of this process, of this movement. This sight brings the Real Investigation and reveals that what you take so serious is not real. Thought tells you things that seem very real for you, very serious. But when you look closer at it, you see what it tells is not serious, not true. Thought deals with imagination and memory, and this is not you.

Therefore, the investigation reveals that you take the illusion about what you are very seriously. This approach is a fundamental step for Awakening as it explains what You are by clearly showing what You are not. In the light of this clear vision, you can see by yourself you are not this story thoughts tell you. Consequently, the illusion disappears, ends, and all this confusion created by thought and its stories are completely removed. This is the basis of Meditation, essential to this Awakening.

Everyone wants to be free, wants to know what is real, but there is a fight, an internal contradiction, since the mind - this illusory movement - has no interest in Freedom, in What is Real. In other words, there is something in yourself willing That, but also  something that does not want it. This unconscious movement of the thought is the part that does not want That. It has a very strong, very skilled and quite surprising structure.

In the mind (and here I use the expression “mind” for this movement), you are under a repetitive pattern that I call as “conditioned bias.” You face moments when you are completely numb, drunk with thoughts. Thoughts work like a kind of drug, dragging you into quite known states to the mind. If you start paying real attention to that and becoming aware of this movement (what I call as “Investigation”), you stop being too  enchanted; the 'drug' loses its effect. Therefore, imagination ceases to provide you pleasure and this flight of fancy on mental stories cannot fill you anymore.

That’s when you give up trusting thoughts are telling you the truth about who you are, so thoughts lose strength and no longer prevail. In the same way, the feelings connected to these thoughts, apparently strong at first, start to slow down as they are not reinforced anymore. They lose their power to prevail, they lose stability and continuity.

In the beginning, it is like a toboggan: going to the top and down. At some point you are more aware and there are fewer thoughts about who you think you are, about that self-image, as I usually call it. In another moment, you are more stuck, attached, attached to this imaginary character that the thought says you are. Then, one time, you are on top; another, you are down, but you are going to find in yourself a place, a space, outside that waviness of the toboggan.

Notice that everything is a matter of focus. You need to focus on this Reality outside of the thought, that is You. Some call it as Presence; others as Consciousness or Being – all of them are names for your True Nature. By doing so, you reduce your focus on thoughts and your distractions with mental images, with imaginations and with the mind’s fluctuations will cease dramatically.

Realize how you can keep this through a real work. Keep it very simple: stop now and examinate; there is no difficulty on doing that. Stop and examinate what thoughts have to say. This is the only possibility you have to go beyond the illusion of the sense of a present “me” at this moment.

This is not self-analysis and you will not analyze the thought. It is not an "I" analyzing the thought. You will only approach that and to look at it. Do it now, at this moment.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on February 18^th, 2019 - First published in Portuguese on March 28^th, 2019. Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 pm (Local Time: Brazil BRT), except during Retreat periods. For more information about Paltalk app and how to participate, please access: http://mestregualberto.com