Do you know what the source of attention is? Like, if you’re paying attention, where is the location of that which projects the attention? I wish I had known this earlier. And if you haven’t seen this yet, this might save you years of searching in the wrong direction.

The thing is, all meditation practice, underneath their techniques and the various traditions, the fasting, the prayers, the rituals etc. They all point at this one singular thing: they are attempting to help you stay longer in concentrated awareness. That’s it! That’s all they are doing(for the most part). So, the breath counting, the visualizations, the mantras and all of that, they are really a scaffolding for the same building. And the building is just sustained, undistracted attention. But why does this matter? Oh! It matters a whole lot! In concentration, you begin to see what moves and what stays constant through all movement. And then it becomes clearer where the movement emerges from. You see where movement comes from and then you start noticing the flow of attention!

Oh, you don’t know what I am talking about?

See, most of us experience attention the way we experience water from a tap. Sometimes, and when we pay attention, we may notice what it lands on, what it fills, and what it drains from and then we chase after the object of attention. For example look at how thoughts move. Look at any thought! A thought appears and then almsot instantly attention flows towards it. Or you may notice an emotion rising and then your attention rides on it. Instantly! Or see a sensation too! It calls within the body and then attention answers and moves towards it. Attention moves object to object to object. Over and over and over again. But somehow we have not made the bigger Inquisition! Where does attention come from?

This is one of the most fascinating discoveries. Writing about it to give the answer is of course impossible. But this is a discovery that even transcends the mind’s utility of understanding objects. I tell you, this practice of tracing where attention comes from is foundational to any deep spiritual practice. I insist you try this now. Rather than following attention outward toward the next thought, gently turn it around. Well, that’s the best pointer for this…turn attention inward. Not to think about attention but to sense where it arises from. This sounds confusing or even like a moot idea. Why would anyone do that? But practice it. Attempt it! Bring attention back to itself. Or try to this.

At first, you find the ‘yourself’ you’ve always called ‘yourself’. The “me” behind the eyes, the familiar sense of the individual who is doing the noticing. That’s the first important discovery. Most people live their whole lives never pausing long enough to find even that. But stay with it. Don’t settle there.

Because the “me” is still a location. It is still a point of view, a perspective, a gathered-ness of experience that calls itself a self. Ask again: where does this “me” arise from?What you find… or rather, what finds itself, is not another object. It is more like the recognition of what was always already present before attention even spawned from anywhere. It’s almost like it’s prior to aliveness itself. Almost like aliveness came out of that sense. In Buddhist lingo, it would be called Emptiness. It is the awareness that isn’t owned by anyone. In particular, not owned or originated from a self. It would infact appear to be the source from which the individual perspective pours out, the way light pours from a lamp without diminishing the lamp. Finding this, it becomes less convincing that you are a self enclosed in a body, separated from the world by skin and circumstance. What remains during this discovery is a kind of seamlessness. No inside and outside pressing against each other. No self-straining toward others. Just the source, this aliveness, awareness, the ground of being— breathing as everything it appears to be.

What’s interesting about this is it moves away from the realms of mere philosophy to a direct noticing, that available in any ordinary moments.

Practicing this turning inward, then, is not the accumulation of spiritual experiences. It is the gradual wearing away of the habit of looking only outward. Until slowly(at least for me it’s slowly), like dawn, you find you cannot locate where you end and anything else begins.

It is such a wonder! Such a mystery! The Mystery!

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