staying present with split attention

[wenwu]

wow so many replies

 

kind of mute now but thanks for all the help

 

my 2 cents for all this, if you really live in the now all the time there is no pain and no good or bad there is just what is, we only have good or bad because of the relation of what went before or what we hope to happen later, but the best place to be is now and more than that it is the only place you can be, if you ignore the now you can't learn. an easy thing to say but difficult thing to do

 

attention and focus means being present in everything that you do, which is why i have problems trying to do 2 things at the same time but the other posters (sorry i don't remember your names) only when you thing of it as multitasking is when things slip away

 

thanks all

 

stay cool

[Uncle Fester]

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Edited September 28, 2021 by darebak

[Taomeow]

I've studied both physics and taoist sciences, and the resulting paradigm I gleaned is that of co-creation, not of a creative consciousness breathing animation into its passive recipients (whether human or animal). In other words, no higher consciousness can dream me up unless I am real.

Edited March 22, 2007 by Taomeow

[Uncle Fester]

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Edited September 28, 2021 by darebak

[Taomeow]

I never said anything about passive recipients. What you say makes sense, though what one percieves as "I"

must have a much more limited role in this co-creation than what we could simplify for discussion as a vast creative field.

Now the real fun begins when we start to as ourselves, what is this "I" that I keep referring to? And where?

Where do these thoughts and ideas I attribute to "I" originate from?

 

Good question.

 

"I" am a follower of the taoist paradigm of "I." In the taoist anatomy and physiology of an entity, there's levels of "I" all of which a unified consciousness perceives as "I," while a split consciousness perceives only two or three levels -- e.g., those of the material body, emotional body, and mental/thinking body. But then if you are practicing to unify your "I," you might start perceiving your body of qi, and ideally gain as much unity with it as you hopefully have with your material body, i.e. you can raise your arm when you want to, likewise you can raise your qi if you want to, you can dress up your physical body in a cotton shirt and your fingers are yours enough to be able to button it, and likewise your qi will be yours enough for you to be able to "button" and "unbutton" your Liver qi or your Five Shens. These are all phenomena of the Lower of the Triple Realms.

 

But then there's the Middle Realm where you causal body dwells, and a unified consciousness that gets in touch with THAT can "button" and "unbutton" the past and the future and the personal and universal reasons for same. This one is in communication with, e.g., not just a cat but CAT, the universal power manifesting in the lower realm as scores of ordinary cats (that's where the most powerful shamans go for their animal spirit helpers -- a true spirit animal is a collective causal consciousness of this whole species, not an individual critter; and that's what Rupert Sheldrake who stumbled upon some out-of-context phenomena from the causal-body realm and tried to tackle "scientifically" calls "morphogenetic fields.")

 

But then there's the Higher Realm and the body of tao... which is also yours, but won't let you button its shirt until and unless your lower-level bodies are proficient enough. (This is why I always laugh when people talk about their being "always in touch with tao" as some universal inevitability requiring no cultivation. Yeah right. Come like the spring, benefitting all beings, THEN you're tao. Blow like the wind so ten thousand things can arise and be themselves, THEN you're tao. Having read Tao Te Ching doesn't tao make...) The body of tao is a force of nature, a force behind nature! -- and it is also "I," but only accessible to the lower levels of "I" when these are properly integrated... This is why traditional taoist cultivation never, ever ignores or neglects the physical body, the "lowly" world of ordinary human feelings, the refinement of the thinking, artistic, scientific, philosophical, intellectual mind --

they ALL matter, and none of them are "discarded" from the whole "I" because its wholeness depends on a proper connectedness of all its levels in all realms -- lower, middle, higher.

 

That's the paradigm within which "I" is as real to me as it gets.

[fatherpaul]

fascinating post

 

the duality of perception highlighting the way

 

if attention can be split in 2

it can be split in 4

etc. etc.

 

this is fragmentation

 

i see this

[freeform]

great post, Taomeow

[Taomeow]

A grateful bow to Fatherpaul and Freeform.

[Spectrum]

Beautiful is as beautiful does. When the water flows the banks are fresh.

 

This is why traditional taoist cultivation never, ever ignores or neglects the physical body, the "lowly" world of ordinary human feelings, the refinement of the thinking, artistic, scientific, philosophical, intellectual mind --

 

seek and you lose it

 

forget and you find it

 

beauty is the most

 

ordinary way

 

passing gracefully

 

by

 

fading away

 

into a background

 

I am

 

Spectrum