How to haul in your attention when you witness something negative, but said attention sticks like glue to it?

[4bsolute]

For example noises that irritate us. Weather it be man-made, like screaming children (not laughing, rather screaming and crying) or sounds from machinery like parked trucks with running laugh motors or irritated wildlife in the garden or surrounding neighborhood that constantly put out alarming sounds?

 

Here I have found a new obstacle in my life. My attention, my awareness. And this is something more difficult when you are born empathic, since you feel everything clearly in certain locations/chakras in your system, rather than feeling or hearing only the sound.

When ever I witness something that irritates me in terms of creates a negative response in my being, my attention then sticks to it. Because I have resistance to it. Can we ever get in a state of non-resistance towards something we truly feel causing harm in our bodies?
For example yesterday I was in a highly creative mood but when exposed to crying children from the neighborhood I felt how the creativity was naturally fading away. I did not even want to pay conscious attention to them, since after my creative activity I was busy cooking anyway, but even the unconscious reaction triggered a slight sadness in my chest. Like said, putting me out of the creative vortex I was in.

Okay, what do I do here? Isolate myself? Which I did in the first place, which brought me in said highly creative state, because I was purely by myself. Normally I have opened windows in my office room the entire day, closing windows for the first time in months felt strange but the results were outstanding. But that is so un-spiritual, so un-monastic "You shut yourself off from the outside, how can you!"

 

Clearly this state is in opposition to the crying from the outside. Resistance to what is. How the heck would someone get create when he or she has a chaotic neighborhood around him or her, like you already know from my previous posts?

To ask the main question:

What do you do when your attention, your focus, your awareness, your stream of light, when You stick like glue to a certain circumstance that creates such a negative response in you?

Can you imagine that I feel how bigger the events get, the more my awareness is on them? This is very easy to notice when you put your attention on birds, which make an alarming sound. The pace in which they put out the sounds gets much faster. Yes, I did two different observations: One with an agitated mood (surely the bird feels it when something "watches" him through it's hearing, which is agitated only fueling his alarming sounds more) and the other one with a purely neutral mood. I would say they ended up changing nothing. I can not clearly say that a loving attention, focusing my hearing on such a bird coming from my heartspace, calming him down..

 

How do you let the outside be the outside when we talk about noise? How to you stay with yourself, in your Self, and not let your Chi flow into those negative circumstances and polute your being, inwardly through the openings of your ears? How can you stay centered in such situations?

 

50% of my day is mental activity. I am no longer infront of the computer all day, which I understood formed my eyesight very tense when I looked at animals or humans, creating an unpleasantness. Relaxing the eyes is especially important for me when doing Tai Chi.

 

Regarding the focus sticking like glue to something, medium-hard to get it off but keeping it off is very difficult for me at the moment. Do I have too much mental activity going on? What is this unwanted 'sticking to' something, like glue?

Edited July 30, 2014 by 4bsolute

[Anoesjka]

Unwanted sticking of our attention to thoughts is what we have been taught to do. It's also quite natural, in a world where we are in danger to be eaten by other creatures.

 

I struggle with it too. It's the ego clinging on to all that could possibly be an excuse to not being fully aware.

 

The challenge is to not judge the distracting thoughts. When you're in the state of not clinging, those sounds will bring you even deeper, in my experience.

[C T]

The general advice one would hear from Buddhist teachers in relation to this is: Drop analysis, just observe how the thoughts change without assigning preferences of good and bad. By the habit of analysis, those things that you see as blockages, instead of getting weaker, actually gain in strength and size simply by way of getting attention. And attention naturally requires analysis, which also requires names and labels. All these factors point to one thing: setting up boundaries and limitations where there are none. This is by far one of the most prevalent habitual trait that takes some effort to overhaul. It is mostly this that prevents the presence of being fully present, if that makes any sense.

[Bearded Dragon]

Yeah, what CT said.

 

I haven't done much seated meditation but when I have tried to do it over long timespans the pain gets quite bad. It's a perfect example of what you're talking about. After you train your mind to deal with negative circumstances then the pain is there but you're able to carry on and have your concentration where it needs to be. The pain is valid, and it's still there, but your mind learns to break free from it somewhat.

 

The biggest turning point for me what the realisation that negativity is ok. Your mind releases from it thereby not making it negative anymore but merely a sensation. It loses its reference point that makes it negative. I can do it with everyday things. The bigger the sensation the harder it is to pull off. This, I feel, is a product of your willpower to stand against adversity.

[GrandmasterP]

Observe the aversion , recognise it for what it is....

a passing feeling...

Let it pass by returning to your breathing.

Edited July 30, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[C T]

Observe the aversion , recognise it for what it is....

a passing feeling...

Let it pass by returning to your breathing.

Aversions are easy to spot... its the blissful states that would be more enchantingly troublesome.

[GrandmasterP]

The advice remains the same .

Observe the bliss and let it go by returning to your breathing.

 

Edited July 30, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[4bsolute]

The general advice one would hear from Buddhist teachers in relation to this is: Drop analysis, just observe how the thoughts change without assigning preferences of good and bad. By the habit of analysis, those things that you see as blockages, instead of getting weaker, actually gain in strength and size simply by way of getting attention. And attention naturally requires analysis, which also requires names and labels. All these factors point to one thing: setting up boundaries and limitations where there are none. This is by far one of the most prevalent habitual trait that takes some effort to overhaul. It is mostly this that prevents the presence of being fully present, if that makes any sense.

 

Can you please elaborate further why attention naturally requires analysis? I can simply listen to a sound without analyzing it, can I?

 

Yes, just checked, but it sounds way more vague and not like I have described being an alarming sound. True.

[4bsolute]

Yeah, what CT said.

 

I haven't done much seated meditation but when I have tried to do it over long timespans the pain gets quite bad. It's a perfect example of what you're talking about. After you train your mind to deal with negative circumstances then the pain is there but you're able to carry on and have your concentration where it needs to be. The pain is valid, and it's still there, but your mind learns to break free from it somewhat.

 

The biggest turning point for me what the realisation that negativity is ok. Your mind releases from it thereby not making it negative anymore but merely a sensation. It loses its reference point that makes it negative. I can do it with everyday things. The bigger the sensation the harder it is to pull off. This, I feel, is a product of your willpower to stand against adversity.

 

Yes, I understand the point you made. But please remember that pain, genuine pain, not a rememberance of a pattern, is natural and important for us to react on. Otherwise you neglect pain until you are no longer in this physical form. Good job then in achieving having not paid attention to the highest amount possible, but now you are no longer in the form

 

Surely negativity in itself is the same quality of energy like positivity, underneath. But there is a point why you experience it as negativity. This is the most simplest of languages we have. Pain = no, Pleasant = yes. Your ultimate fulfilment will always await you where you have experienced the most pleasant and enjoyful feelings.

 

Yes, we can learn great things from pain and suffering. Ultimately to get out of it and feel good (again). So you can see this as the road of individuals not having internalized a common sense of wisdom in terms of how to approach and handle life.

 

Having to withstand pain and negativity in order to "achieve" something is such a ridiculous and illusionairy concept. Probably "the" most wrong concept we have here.

 

You lower your vibrations by being in negative states. You rise up in realization the higher your vibration is. So what use is there experiencing negativity for just seeing it as "where I not want to go any further"?

 

Pain in itself is something that wants to be understood. Not looked over. Since it contains valuable information for our expansion Not getting into that pain again. Pain in the bodies is a spot of tense energy that we want to losen to experience and utilize the released energy therein. And through understanding it we transform it and can use it's stored energetic potential.

 

Remember we are always formless. It is beautiful to be in the forms, in this outmost extension. I just gave you a glimpse of what you will feel, when you are reconnected to Source. Enlightened. You are still here and you will realize just that, the perfection that is everywhere, in Form. Not fleeing from physical, cooperating with and ultimately shaping the forms. From this God-perspective.

 

I, am eager to see life from this point. I have a good old friend who tastes life from a very high perspective, long traded his personality and ego-mind for a greater consciousness and I can only grasp tiny bits of what he describes of being inexplicable fulfilling being 'here' from this vantage point.

 

Remember yourself when you were here as a child, in a very young physical body, you experienced constant bliss. Everything was fun.

Edited July 31, 2014 by 4bsolute