A questioner asks about the relationship between awareness and attention in self-enquiry. Rupert Spira distinguishes awareness as the unchanging background from attention as its localisation within experience, clarifying how enquiry directs attention without creating a new separate entity.
Transcript
Um, I wrote my question down. It might be, it's short, but it might be a little thinky, so just throw me a bone on that. I'd love to understand better the relationship between awareness and attention. More specifically, my current wonders of the movement and focusing of attention. I love localizing and focusing attention on a fun project I'm working on. I also love turning away from the content of my experience and and really feeling the peace that I am as as we did with gear just moments ago. My question is is as I said it's a little thinky a little curiosity. What is deciding and and we're doing this turning away? Is it the finite mind awareness other mixture? What is doing this this turning away of the attention is this return to um >> sorry, what, was, your, name >> Austin >> Austin in order to understand this um we have to understand the meaning of the word attention many of you have heard me explain this so my apologies but it it it's helpful the the answer is in the understanding of the ethmology of the word attention It comes from two Latin words a meaning to or towards and tendere meaning to stretch. So attention means a stretching towards. And this is in fact our experience. We want to pay attention. We stretch our awareness towards that thing. Pay attention to the airplane. You don't stretch your attention to the sensation at the soles of your feet. You stretch your attention from where you are, from where your awareness is. You you stretch your attention to the sound. So attention is always a stretching. So imagine a rubber band that in its natural condition is unstretched. That's awareness in its natural condition to state of equilibrium, a state of peace, a state of unstretched, no attention, awareness abiding in itself. But then you want to pay attention to the to the sound. So your awareness, you stretch yourself towards the sun. You stretch that your your knowing, your faculty of knowing because you're made of knowing. You stretch yourself towards the sound. So now the rubber band is is stretched. It's not in a natural it's not in its natural state of equilibrium. It's in a state of tension. It's stretched. So self inquiry is when you you you the way I sometimes describe it is tracing your way back to to your true nature. But imagine what happens when your attention releases the object. You stop paying you you've stretched you've got a r visualize attention like a a rubber band. You stretch it towards the sound. But then you stop paying attention to the sound. You let go of the sound. What happens to attention? What happens to the rubber band? >> Comes, back. >> It, just, goes, back., It's, pulled, back to its natural state of equilibrium. So although I sometimes refer to self inquiry as something that we as a person do that's something that King Lear does that that's not really true that's a concession to the self that we think we are it is it is just attention go going back to its natural state. It is awareness that draws its knowing back to itself back to its because attention is a state of disease. It's a state of tension. So when you let go of the object nobody does when you let go of it. When if you stretch a rubber band, you don't have to push when when you let go of one end you don't have to push the rubber band back to its natural state of equilibrium. You just let go and it goes back there naturally. So self inquiry is in fact just awareness coming back to itself. Nobody does it. It's just awareness ceasing to be in a state of tension. Seeking seeking to be in a state of attention. The state of attention is a state of tension. When awareness lets go of its object, it just goes back naturally effortlessly to itself. But when we describe that from the point of view of the separate self as a concession to the separate self, we say to the separate self, trace your way back to your true nature. That is um that that statement is predicated on the belief that there is a separate self that can trace its way back. Okay, as a concession to that separate self, trace your way back to but that's not really what happens. It's just that awareness stretches itself towards the object and then it lets the object go and this return to itself is just natural. It's effortless. It goes back to itself. But from the point of view of the separate self, that effortless return to itself feels like an effort. >> Is, that, similar, to, uh, turning, away, from the content? We're not >> turning, away, from, the, content, is, letting go of the >> we're, not, actively., We're, not, turn, we're just kind of letting the car go back in. >> Yes., turning, away, from, the, condalia, is just a phrase that's said in reference to the turning towards the attention stretching to or towards you stretch towards the object and you turn away from the object but it's not really a turning away it's a sinking back is a much better sometimes in in the early uh I struggled with this for years in the early um descriptions of self inquiry in some some books self inquiry is is referred to as a turning around of the attention. It's not a turning around. It's a Ramos's phrase is better. It's a sinking where he called it the sinking of the mind into the heart. The heart is awareness and the mind is is the activity of attention. It's just the relaxing of attention back to its source. It's it's what happens when you let go of the rubber band. It just relaxes back into its natural state. That's self inquiry. Just this relaxing of the attention. So these early phrases are turning around of attention that they're legitimate. No, no statement is completely accurate but it's much more accurate to speak in terms of relaxing the attention sinking the attention flow down and down and down. This this feeling of sinking of going backwards. You don't go forwards. >> Thank, you.