Q: What is it that allows me to direct my attention?
/Wood Canyon Road, Death Valley
I just did a meditation that Rupert Spira encourages, where I shift my attention between thinking, sensing, and listening.
What is it that is directing the attention to these three things? It feels like something I am in control of, that I am doing it. It seems like I am here and I choose to put my attention on certain things and shift attention between certain things.
What is going on here?
Rupert is offering an exercise in experiencing. It is a concession to the belief that you are an individual and that "you" have a free will that directs your attention from thinking to sensing, to listening, and back again.
From the perspective of the individual, the "I" decides to first pay attention to thinking, then to sensing, then to listening. There is thus an apparent choice to move the attention between one of the three explorations.
His exercise is not intended to fortify the belief in a separate self, but instead its purpose is to help you recognize the simplicity of experiencing itself. By moving our attention to "thinking" we give permission to explore this "form" of experiencing. The same can be said when we explore "sensing" and "listening" (and "seeing", etc).
When we begin to notice that the seeing of the mountain in the distance occurs in the same place as does the seeing of the chair across the room, a curiosity may arise that wants to explore why this is so. We may also notice that the thinking about the mountain and about the chair also occur in the same place as the seeing occurs (as does listening and sensing).
When these discoveries are really taken in, our world changes. When "out there" and "in here" become less fixed, the belief in a "you" out there and the "me" in here become harder to maintain. Without a "me" in here, how can "I" be chooser of where "my" attention goes?
Even when we look at it through the lens of the separate self, we may see that we are not the chooser, and instead only appear to be the chooser. When you were "choosing" to shift your attention to your thinking, did your attention ever wander? When you were listening, did any thoughts appear? Did you choose to have your attention wander or for those thoughts to appear?
If you were the chooser, wouldn't you always choose to be joyous and open-hearted?
By definition, the individual chooses its action. If you are really certain that the individual was the ultimate truth, then what are you looking for?
Isn't it possible that you already know what you are looking for? Isn't it possible that it is only this "you" that is in the way? Are you certain this is not so?
Trust your answers to those questions.