Today is the day I had planned to write this article.
But instead I’m lying here doing the Huber cure, that amazing practice intensive of caring for the body while keeping custody of the attention.
It’s a beautiful day so I’m resting outside, with a light breeze, clouds overhead, the sounds of birds, chimes, and water bubbling in a fish pond. I’m watching as my attention moves. Having direct sensory experiences, and then being in thoughts about those experiences. Having experiences, having thoughts about those experiences. Back and forth.
When I’m with the sounds or the breezes, I’m aware of where my attention is. But when my attention slips over to thoughts about those experiences, I’m less aware of being in an about. Many moments of birds and breezes pass without my awareness. Eventually I come to, or wake up. This is particularly true since I’m thinking about writing this piece. Each experience and insight I have gets siphoned into a narration of how I might express it in words.
It’s a familiar process, reminiscent of many fond days at the Monastery. I would have an experience or insight that lasted maybe, at most, a minute. Then I would spend the next hour thinking about how I would talk about it in group, practicing what I would say. Eventually I caught on to this scam and started using the recorder. First, I would use it to capture the jewel of the experience. Then I would use it as a live narration tool, speaking into the recorder what I was experiencing at that moment to help me stay more in the now.
I continue to practice with this and continue to be astonished at how much I can think I’m present. I think I’m right here with what’s happening, but over and over again, it turns out I’m with the thoughts I’m having about what’s happening, rather than being directly with what’s happening. When I wake up and pivot to presence, the direct experience has a much richer quality than any about. So how can it be so difficult to stay there?
What I’ve seen is that egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate is exactly the jealous lover Cheri has said it is. It does not appreciate attention being on anything other than it. It does not want to listen to the birds for more than a moment; it does not want to be touched by the breeze for more than a caress. And it doesn’t appreciate me lingering in the experience of listening or being touched either!
Sometimes I’ll play a game, moving my attention back and forth — noticing, narrating, noticing, narrating. Getting a clearer and clearer sense of what each one feels like.
Back here in the Huber cure, I enjoy another few moments feeling the next breeze, another few moments hearing the water and the birds. Then there is some narration about it or perhaps about something else entirely. But eventually I realize I’m in the land of about and I choose.
I choose again, and again, to come back to where the real jewels are.
Gasshō
Melissa W.