Self Help Through Self Directing - The Power Of Attention

How many of us find ourselves thinking and then doing something we know we will probably regret.  Sure enough, later on we do regret the act and the thought that preceded it.  How wonderful it would be if we could get right to the crux of modifying our negative compulsive behavior, taking intentional control over all our thoughts and actions and so moving on in a different, fundamentally more satisfactory direction in life.

Amazingly there is such a way to self-directing control, provided we first take the little time necessary to recognize, to discover, our chief asset in this process, our Attentive Awareness. 

Ordinarily we pay little or no attention to our Awareness.  Instead we just let it go to whatever is most strongly demanding its attention, like that loud commercial on TV. We constantly pay attention to whatever our Awareness has attached itself to, its object, whatever that may be, without paying any attention to our Awareness itself.

In order to recognize Awareness, we need to intervene in our automatic association with its object, and bring our attention to Awareness itself.

We can do this easily in the visual space if we simply back our attention off from its visual object, just a little, into the clear empty visual space in front of us.  Now, with our attention resting in this clear empty space we can immediately become Aware of our Awareness just as It IS!!

You need to realize this Awareness of Awareness, so, if you haven't yet, then just back up and re-read the previoius paragraph, following the instructions until it Clicks!  Bingo!!  Awareness of Awareness!!  Very simple, nothing exceptional, yet placing our attention on our Awareness is the KEY to the Power of attentiveness. 

With this Awareness of Awareness you become attentive not only to Awareness, but more importantly you become attentive to where it is placed, to the Aware placement of your Awareness attention as well.  Up to now, when your awareness went out to an object you felt that you were simply aware of the object itself, with no attention paid to Awareness.  Now when your awareness goes out to an object you are highly aware of, and attentive to, the placement of Awareness itself on the appearance of the object.  This attentiveness to the placement of Awareness is the means, the empowerment, the engine for locating and relocating your attentiveness, for directing your attentiveness according to your own will.

Without this key we cannot turn on the powerful engine of directed attentiveness.  With this key the power of directed Awareness of Awareness, of directed attentiveness, is always enabled, always ready for us to apply it to redirect the pattern of our attention, to redirect the very course of our lives.

You will find it difficult to maintain this Awareness of Awareness, but the more you work with it the easier and more automatic it will become to get it back when you realize you have "lost" it.

Now to the application of your power-play of Self-Direction.

Whenever you cognize that your attention has gone to something, a kind of thought, the beginning point or any point on a path, you figure you ought not take, immediately bring your attention to Awareness of Awareness.  See your attention trying to establish itself where ever it is that you prefer not, and bring your attentiveness directly to your Awareness thereof.  You now have directed attentiveness to the present placement of Awareness.  At this point you are fully in control of the directed placement of attention.  Now, just as intentionally, Re-direct your attentiveness off of and away from that whatever, placing attentiveness first into the Clear space, regaining Awareness of Awareness alone there in that Clear space, then relocate attentiveness on to whatever affirmative self-directed interest you may choose for your own ultimate greater role and purpose in life.

When you find this working for you, one small item at a time, time after time, you may wonder why something so simple should be so powerful.  The reason is that you are much more akin to your actual Awareness than you are even to your own body.  Here, in realizing Awareness of Awareness in the Clear, you have just taken a giant step towards Self-Realizing your own fundamental nature as pure Consciousness-Awareness, something you may well wish to look into even more now.  Fortunately there are now many sites on the Internet that inform us about Self-Realization.  To gain the perspective of this Astronomer-Tibetan Buddhist-Universal Consciousness Being's view you can see much more, including the entire book Self-Realization, one's own journey from self to Self-Liberation in the world of today, at http://www.SelfRealizeNow.org and more of relevance to you and all of us really at http://www.SelfRealizeNow.com. Please make them your own free sites for your own Self-Realization right here and now. 

For now, May the Power and Blessings of your own Awareness of Consciousness-Awareness be with you always.

Jim Wray