Title : Cultivating Consciousness in an Unconscious World
link : Cultivating Consciousness in an Unconscious World
Cultivating Consciousness in an Unconscious World
by Richard Smoleynewdawnmagazine
Politicians constantly hide from the truth. Why they can get away with it? According to a recent study conducted at Harvard University, it is because people have such terrible attention span.
behavioral scientist Todd Rogers of the Kennedy School at Harvard and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School conducted a simple experiment to see when and if people can detect a dodge. They recorded an answer to a question about universal health care (a controversial issue in the US) speaker. Then they attached the same answer to three different questions: the original question on health care, one on consumption of illegal drugs, and a third on terrorism. Surprisingly, subjects found the so reliable speaker when he gave the answer on health care to a question about the use of illegal drugs - a related topic, but different - as when he responded to the original question about health care . Moreover, when questioned immediately afterwards, almost none of the subjects could remember exactly what I asked.
Part of the reason for these results, Rogers believes, is nothing but humans have a poor attention span. Poor care is "universal to all the animals that we managed to study," says Rogers. "Although we do not realize, we go through our lives detect only the essence of what is happening. Even if we wanted to pay attention to each answer, we would have a limited capacity" to do so. Another related reason is that when people are listening to a speaker, they are taking in nonverbal cues such as body language, facial expressions, and sympathy. In short, even when doing something as simple as listening to a speaker, the audience is overwhelmed by information, allowing politicians to dodge answers without appearing. These results are more than a theoretical importance. Facing the economic and social crisis, and haunted by the ghost of a global conflict, hunger and environmental collapse, people are demanding change. At the same time, however, there is widespread suspicion of all political and economic ideologies. The civilization of the world at this time is like a sick moving restlessly in bed, unable to find a comfortable position. It may be that what is needed is not a change in ideologies, but a change in consciousness.
The problem is deeper than simply detect if a politician has responded to a question or not. Many of the great spiritual traditions of the world often tell us that we live in illusion. The spiritual master of the twentieth century G.I. Gurdjieff said: "A modern man lives in the dream, the dream is born and in the dream I die." Contemporary Tibetan lama Tulku Tarthang writes: "Because of our capacity for self-observation are usually are not well developed, that often are blind to our suffering." Could they be saying that it is our poor attention span that keeps us in the cognitive slavery?
Among the proposed solutions to this chronic deficit disorder and generalized care vary to some degree. For Gurdjieff, the answer was (at least partly) in what he called self-remembering: an attention that is divided between the outer world and the inner world. How does this work in practice? A teacher told me how Gurdjieff, under normal circumstances, when you look out the window, his attention goes with it. In a sense go out the window too. Their sense of self is lost. To counter this, he suggested that when you look out the window, stands a little attention for himself, even if it's something as simple as a conscious awareness of a hand or a foot. "When you look out the window, not out the window," as he said.
To Tarthang Tulku, the answer lies along a slightly different route. It is believed that failure of our attention has to do with a deep fear of discomfort. Our suffering occurs beneath the surface, and refuse to touch off the avoidance of emotional pain it would bring. An alternative that is recommended is not only to touch the pain, but to explore it - feel it as completely as possible. "Whenever we are trapped in a physical or mental conflict, we can focus on it, heat it up, get into the middle of it," he says. Going directly to the psychological pain so often transform it into a dynamic new and more creative energy.
There are many other approaches, but the point is the same: to refine and focus attention capacity not forget what this question that will not go out of the window was made. This will seed is sown. British occultist Charles R. Tetworth writes about the formation of a magician:
As an apprentice, he or she will have learned how to hold a picture in your mind for an hour at a time. He will have learned how to maintain the direction amid the distractions of life. He will have learned to keep in touch with what is real in him, even in the midst of passion. He will have learned some irregular tides that the hearts of men move. He will be independent of the movements of the points of view of fashion and able to take a long term view of the apparent tragedies of humanity. This will make a more conscious member of the human race.
Although part of this passage may have little to do with us - not many people will be able to keep in your mind an image for an hour - that provides some genuine, and important guidelines for living in the middle riot today. The key is practice - yet manage to do - to cultivate a spotlight on yourself. You can do this now, closing my eyes and sitting attentively for a few minutes. At first you let your attention is focused on body sensations, however, they are presented: sensations of the feet on the floor, back against the chair, and so on. Then let your attention is focused on the flow of thoughts, images and emotions that pass before the mind's eye. You will soon realize that you can see these thoughts enter consciousness as images on a screen, and go back with the same facilidad.La question then is, who is doing exactly observation? It is not the body; The body is part of what is observed. Nor is the stream of thoughts flowing through the screen of the mind. You will find faster than you can see how far. And if there is any distance, however slight, between the user and thoughts, it shows immediately that thoughts are not you.
This awareness is one of the main goals of meditation. It will allow, in the words of Tetworth, "to keep in touch with what is real" within you, even in pain and disorders of life. He also released from slavery to such things as opinions, current fashions of belief, and, perhaps most importantly, the subtle but debilitating attachment to his concept of himself as a "good person." If you pursue the investigation of self-observation enough, you will realize that these views and concepts themselves are nothing more than what they have absorbed from the media, advertising, your family, your friends . You will also discover that he has covered himself in a circle. You read the views and reflect his own. You listen to "experts" who only confirm what we already believe. You support politicians who appeal to their own fears and illusions.
exercises do not pretend that I have outlined in this article are a panacea. Nor they are easy, and they usually have a great deal of patience and effort to apply them in any but the most basic form. And you will notice that in themselves do not have any brilliant solutions to problems multifold world. But if you apply them, you will be more aware, and you will be free from delusions and anxieties which press so heavily on the human race.
What comes next? A long work, which is starting to become aware of their own special function - that is, the role it can play to help the world more effectively. It may or may not mean embracing a cause or a political agenda. Instead it may be, for example, which involves working quietly as a light shining in the dark corridors of a corporation, seemingly soulless. No matter: that is their job. As you go deeper in scope than some teachings call the Self or the "true self" rather this function, take forms for you, and you will be able to become a powerful force for change rather than a weak, worried and anxious consumers
Sources:.
P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of a Forgotten Education, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1949.
Peter Saalfield, "The Art of Dodge," Harvard Magazine, March-April 2012; http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/03/the-art-of-the-dodge ; Accessed March 13, 2012.
Charles R. Tetworth, Wielding Power: The essence of the ritual practice, Great Barrington, Massachusetts: Lindisfarne 2002.Tarthang Tulku, Gesture balance: A Guide to consciousness, self-healing and meditation, Berkeley, California: Dharma Publishing, 1977.
About the author
RICHARD Smoley has over thirty years of experience studying and practicing esoteric spirituality. He is also the author of inner Christianity: A Guide to the esoteric tradition; Conscious Love: Insights Mystic Christianity; The essential Nostradamus; Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism and craps Shiva: How to Create Awareness of the Universe. Smoley is the former editor of Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions. He is currently director of the mission :. Journal of the Theosophical Society in America and Quest Books
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