Attention

Meredith: My house has a large wrap around porch, and I like to spend time here in the morning, enjoying the silence. The other morning when I went out to the porch, it was raining hard. There was a clean, damp earthy freshness in the air. The field I look upon appears secluded, and at the same time, open. The birds were enjoying the birdbath, and a deer was just a few feet from the porch – grazing on my flowers for many moments before noticing me. Then, in my quiet reverie, I noticed how everything just seemed so lush, and wet, and I noticed the rain itself, the drops, and the ripples the drops made in the bird bath. I noticed the way the drops hang, like prisms, to the end of the leaves. I wonder about a single drop of rain water, where it comes from, where it goes, what it touches. I thought about my thoughts, as though my perception was a lens, that can become long, wide, or micro at my will. I noticed my self noticing. Who is noticing? A ubiquitous spirit joins me here.

...the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought.... We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Akilesh: Where are you placing your precious attention?

Meredith: Where is my attention? It is more and more on the ultimate, on divine presence everywhere and in everything. My attention is more on the background, not the foreground. However, it is also within. This paradox is one I have been contemplating recently. I recognize that divine presence holds everything, including the cosmos, the earth, nature, and all the species that exist, but it is also the ground of my own awareness. This is like the transcendent and the imminent, the outer and the inner having the same ground of identity. Thus, the viewer is the view, or vice versa. The same divine reality that holds the universe within itself also dwells within our hearts. This, you know.

Akilesh: It is this consciousness, unbounded by any identity, identification, that is Divinity itself. It is that which holds all, and indeed Meredith it is the "ground of (your) own awareness." It is the ground of your being, local, "transcendent and the imminent." As you say the "viewer is the view." Viewing is happening, only there is no viewer at all, no one to which this viewing is happening. It is consciousness itself, the foundation of your being -- and miraculously it is in full measure here in your heart, local and imminent. When you drop ego fixation, there is no mediator between you and existence, no watcher, no observer. You are existence. Viewing is happening but without a viewer. It doesn't require positing a viewer. It's self existing. Presence, or God, or being is self existing. It doesn't require "me," or a thinker at all. In fact, it is this illusion of a thinker that precludes our realization of unity. It is an illusion, yet a compelling and persistent and fundamental illusion. And there is tremendous support and validation for this illusion in consensus reality. This is why it's so difficult to wake up. The conditioning is deep and persistent and pervasive.