Reflections on Awakening, part 12

The lack of attention and discipline is one important factor that keeps me (and countless others) from awakening. Especially when the weather is fine, i am easily distracted from my work of reading, writing, exercising, preparing lessons, tidying up, and other daily chores. I feel like going outside to enjoy the sunshine, white clouds, and cool breeze. Even if it's gloomy, i tend to be diverted. Instead of focussing on the task at hand, i look outside, daydream, get up, get something to eat, surf on the net, and so on. However, the path to awakening apparently requires you to do whatever you do totally, like a machine; eg. when you read you read and shut out all sense perceptions and thoughts beyond the actual decoding of the text and the immediate associations it provokes. (But would a machine have associations? And how do we manage them so that they don't lead too far, away from the activity?) It's a constant struggle. But that's not an excuse for avoiding the effort, for as my dear wife puts it, 'To raise awareness is the job of the aware who on his side has to focus on "being the change" in his own life'. And it's important to go about your task with determination, not half-heartedly. 'Try not. Do, do. Or do not. There is no try', says Yoda to Luke, who is supposed to lift his X-Wing out of the swamp. Obviously, trying includes the expectation of failure. It means that from the outset you don't invest yourself fully, that you doubt you can achieve something. And that in itself reduces the probability of you attracting the cosmic energies needed for the achievement. (Paulo Coelho describes this beautifully somewhere in The Alchimist.)

(Illustration: 'Living Consciously' by Diana Calvario)