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Focusing the Attention
Posted by Joseph Riggio on Friday, June 30, 2006Howdy folks ...
It’s always interesting to refocus ... What I mean by that is the for some time I’ve been asking myself a singular question, “What do I do???” ... for like the last thirty years.
The reason the question keeps coming up is that the answer kept changing ... and for a time, about twenty of those thirty years, I was seeking a better way to change. After that twenty years of relentless searching what I found was “an answer” ... and lo and behold ... one that has continued to sustain me.
The “answer” was actually a little bit enigmatic actually, in that it is a question that “answered” the previous question by replacing it. By the way I highly recommend this method of answering your own questions … especially the really important ones ... replace them with better questions. It’s an old idea ... one passed down through every major spiritual tradition I can find.
Anyway the question that was replaced wasn’t, “What do I do?” - it was, “How do I change?” The *New & Improved* question became, “How do I remain changeless?” ... Now that’s a really good question.
When I apply this question, sustaining the resonance it creates within and around me ... setting up and focusing the filters through which I perceive the world I find that things have shifted. The focus I have is different. Then when I subsequently ask the question, “What do I do?” the answers come out totally differently. I find myself more clearly present in the answers.
In fact from the position established by the question, “How do I remain changeless?"” I find myself before the answer to the question, “What do I do?” Then the answer to what do I do represents a manifestation of who I am as well as who I am becoming.
Pretty cool, eh? This has been in place and I’ve been at play in this for about the last five or so years ... sometimes more completely aligned in relation to it, and alas sometimes less ... but always much more so than I’d even been before the question, “How do I remain changeless?” emerged from my psyche for me.
Now, I have some sense of what it is ... and I can get on with my work.
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
30 June 2006, Princeton, NJ
