Whistling and Paying Attention

Pucker your lips and whistle. Then pucker your lips and merely blow. Now try to explain how you made the difference.

Despite the fact that whistling is a simple observable activity, trying to verbally explain the difference (between whistling and merely puckering your lips to blow) isn't easy.

Explaining what I mean by "paying attention" is even harder than explaining the distinction between whistling and silently blowing air. Trying to objectively distinguish between someone who is paying attention and someone who is simply witnessing appearances (or concentrating or daydreaming) is almost comparable to a deaf man trying to distinguish between someone who is whistling and someone who is merely puckering their lips and blowing air.

"You do know how to whistle, don’t you?"

In order to explain what I mean by "paying attention" I formulated a whole vocabulary of terms. I define my terms with more than ordinary precision for extraordinary clarity because the subject requires extraordinary clarity. I use pictures and symbols to supplement the vocabulary, composing a comprehensive conceptual model of what attention is and how it works. A carefully formulated model, based on rigorous self-observation and practice, is essential to provide an explanatory context for what attention means. Without a careful modeling of the subject based on the most sagacious observations possible, the potential to pay attention will likely remain unrecognized and we will merely be blowing hot air.

Attention means intentionally getting a feel for being present. When you learn how to actually pay attention, then the act of attention becomes intuitively familiar, almost like riding a bicycle. However, unlike riding a bicycle, the act of attention isn’t something you can do "unconsciously" or habitually. Attention is a conscious activity, which precludes it becoming habitual or mechanical in the way that riding a bicycle can become habitual or mechanical.

Attention is similar in some ways to juggling. Attention involves the redistribution and circulation of subtle internal energy. Similar to the act of juggling, the act of attention is a kind of "muscular" exercise requiring dexterity, a continuous awareness of one’s position in space as well as precise timing. The juggling analogy is depicted in the Tarot Trump entitled "The Magician."

Attention, like juggling, is a movement that doesn’t "go somewhere." Attention remains present. Attention increases the amount of energy that circulates within one’s being, and that circulation is what in fact constitutes one’s being, an energetic body.

You must apply your whole being to pay attention, to be fully present. Attention involves the sum of who you are. Attention isn’t something you do with only a portion of your being. Attention isn’t a program that runs on part of your being while other parts of your being do something else. Attention isn’t subconscious or reflexive. Attention is intentional, a conscious action, the exercise of being.

Paying attention can feel very uncomfortable, which is one reason why our ability to pay attention is generally overlooked and undeveloped.

Why pay attention? The exercise of attention increases and extends our sense of being present and thereby grows our being. Attention increases our conscience, our means of feeling. The culmination of the exercise of attention is the full maturity of being, an energetic body that is self-organized and self-sustaining, a fully conscious individual.

Michael

My Aim Essentially

The significance of a life resides in the fulfillment of its unique potential. A human being possesses the potential to develop consciousness. That is what distinguishes a human being from other animals, the potential to develop full consciousness. Consciousness consists of an organization of subtle energy in the body. Consciousness is in fact an energetic body of which the physical body serves as a kind of scaffold or foundation. Consciousness remains little more than a potential unless developed intentionally. Consciousness develops by paying attention. Attention is the intentional act of sustaining the sense of being present. Consciousness grows. By sustaining the intentional act of attention, consciousness evolves progressively, in stages that can be scientifically modeled. Attention redistributes, refines and reorganizes the energy of which we consist, culminating in the creation of a self-sustaining energetic body of full consciousness, the immortal soul. The soul is the fully mature conscious individual, the aim of our evolutionary potential. The soul is the energetic organ with which we are able to sense love and Beauty. And it is the source of right values, scientific and moral and aesthetic.

What I'm Doing

I gather energy by resting, eating and a little exercise to circulate my blood. From the perspective of my entire body, with the energy of which my whole body consists, I apply myself with the act of attention. I thereby increase my bodily awareness until the act of sustained attention produces the Force of consciousness. The Force feels like an electromagnetic energy throughout my body, an energy of which I consciously consist, a conscious energy that is intentionally malleable. I sustain attention so that the Force circulates throughout my body, generating a tacit sense of an energetic body within my physical body. While I persistently pay attention, the Force rises to the center of my head where it forms a knot of chronic thought. Chronic unconscious thought binds energy into a knot. By engaging in self-enquiry (applying the energy of my mind with the act of attention) I get a feel for that knot and thereby intentionally release chronic thought. The Force continues its path of circulation through toward the top of my head. From a higher perspective, as the emerging energetic being who I am, I witness the personality.

The aim of my work is to develop a self-sustaining energetic body of consciousness.

The circulation of the Force that I’m describing is obstructed wherever I am attached, wherever I am mistakenly identified. The energy of which I consist is literally contracted in those areas of my energetic being. By persistently paying attention to the contraction, the whole being who I am releases the contraction and restores that energy into circulation. The circulation of the Force is my consciousness. The extent to which the Force circulates is the extent and continuity of my consciousness.

Conscious Force is generated by the act of attention. Simply witnessing appearances does not generate this conscious Force. The act of attention is an intentional action of accelerating subtle energy throughout the body. The intention to pay attention arises from my bodily awareness itself, my sense of being present as a whole individual in the world.

The faster the energy oscillates, the more it circulates, the more conscious I am, the more I feel.

This is what I’m doing. Some would call it yoga. What’s important is that I’ve formulated a scientific process behind it, so that the process and its results can be independently applied and verified (or not).

Self-sustaining Consciousness

One of the primary characteristics of consciousness is intention. Consciousness is not automatic or involuntary. Consciousness is not willful. Will is the sum of energy possessed by a separate self, a measure of power exercised by a fragment of oneself. Will is a preliminary stage of development of a higher power over oneself, self-mastery. What I refer to as intention is the potential of one’s whole being to act, not a fragment of oneself. Consciousness is one’s whole being. Consciousness is what unifies one’s being, what connects every part of oneself and forms a whole.

Emotions are reactions that arise from thoughts. Emotions are a preliminary stage of developing the energy of which we consist into a self-sustaining energetic body. Learn to get a feel for being present. Paying attention is a continuous feeling of being conscious. You can’t be present unless you feel present.

Make the physical body still. Close your eyes. Withdraw from external distractions. Pay attention.

Observe the chronic thought process, recognize its potential and pose the question, "Who am I?" The aim is to develop self-sustaining consciousness.

Consciousness is a non-conceptual knowing and a feeling. With the mind we learn to perform a higher function of knowing ourselves, and with the heart we learn to perform a higher function of feeling ourselves.

A characteristic of consciousness is self-sustenance, perpetual motion. That means genuine independence. Consciousness means self-mastery and self-knowledge.