From: “Discovery of the Presence of God: Devotional Nonduality” (2006), Chapter 7: The Razor’s Edge, pp.125-126 One-Pointedness of Mind. This is a subject often brought up during lectures and is alluded to in classical spiritual literature. The basics have been described as a volitional process that is often confused with ‘concentration’. It comes about instead as a consequence of focus rather than effort, which is implied by the concept of concentration. The decision is actually to ‘allow’ rather than to ‘do’. It involves the willingness to surrender either clinging to or avoiding the parade of witnessed phenomena, whether they originate internally (mind/emotion) or externally (perception/the senses). It is only necessary to relinquish the attraction or aversion to transitory phenomena. The term ‘concentration’ results in efforting as an ego focus on content, which is linear, whereas the awareness should instead withdraw from content (images, thoughts, ideas, feelings, etc.) to the nonlinear contextual field itself. This attitude results in coming closer to the question of ‘who’ is watching. With inner honesty, one then discovers that there is no ‘who’ but instead there is a ‘what’, which is an autonomous quality that witnesses. It becomes detached by virtue of the withdrawal of intention to ‘do’ something with phenomena, such as extracting pleasure or an emotion. A more accurate term for the process is ‘nonpointedness of mind’ in that it is a choice/decision to not focus and thus be drawn into participation with the passing phenomena. One merely allows the witnessing by volitional choice rather than by effortful focus of one-pointedness of concentration. The term ‘one-pointedness’ is specifically linear as well as dualistic in that it splits contextualization into a ‘who’ that is focusing on a ‘what’, resulting in a dualistic split between a ‘this’ and a ‘that’. This duality subsides as a consequence of the intention to not experience phenomena. Thus, it is in the opposite direction from psychological self inquiry, which is designed to investigate how one thinks or feels while recalling life events. That type of inquiry leads to an endless quest in which each bit of information automatically leads to the next question, indicating that it is therefore a system designed to explore the ego rather than transcend it. It will be noticed that the experiencer aspect of the ego is constantly poised to derive benefit from the witnessed phenomena, even if it is only to confirm its own reality as being the ‘you’ of the ever presumptuous personal ‘I’. The ego is reluctant to accept that the unfolding of sequential phenomena is autonomous and impersonal. It is poised to jump in to impose a feeling, which in turn is always the expression of an ego viewpoint or a positionality, such as an opinion, or at least an order to declare itself to be primordially essential to one’s identity and sense of reality. To cease identifying the experiencer as the reality of oneself is a major transition from dualistic content to nondualistic context, and therefore, from self to Self. Gloria in Excelsis Deo!
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 20:39:54 +0000
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