In
the second interview with Grandfather on 2008_03_31,
there is a link to "Healing-to-Wholeness"
attached to the words "a new kind
of attention",
which "refuses to work".
Anyhow the article on that website is important enough to be quoted
and edited here
(since on the page of that interview
with "Grandfather" there is no more space)
The Healer's Mind
Whenever you are present as the Healer of yourself,
.. (it) means that what will be happening in your conscious mind
will be loving and supportive of whatever you are feeling in the
moment.
For instance, if there is pain, you'll focus your attention on
the pain,
and then find where it centers in your body.
This is radically different than what our conditioned mind has
had us doing automatically
-either finding a way of subduing the pain or escaping it altogether.
One of the deepest and most compelling mandates of human conditioning
has been: "Seek pleasure and avoid pain."
This conditioning has been so pervasive that it seemed to be completely
beneficial and rational.
However, while seeking pleasure makes good sense, avoiding pain
has turned out to very problematic.
When we avoid pain,
we cut ourselves off from a loving connection
with the part of ourselves that is feeling the pain.
This causes at least temporary fragmentation,
and makes it impossible for us to heal the root cause of the pain.
The solution is to train our minds to do something extraordinary,
to turn and face the pain with loving acceptance of its existence
here now, just as it is.
...
Pause for a moment after reading this sentence and feel the support
of the chair under you.
As soon as you are paying attention to the sensations in your
body where you are touching the chair,
take a moment to curl your toes, and pause for a few seconds with
them curled.
Now relax your toes and pause while you feel deeply into the
sense of relaxation...
You may feel, among other possibilities, a radiating or perhaps
tingling sensation.
What you have just done is intentionally focus your attention
on feeling sensations.
This is the quintessential movement that distinguishes the Healer's
mind from ordinary mind
--to refocus conscious attention from mind
and thinking
to sentience and feeling.
The Healer's Attention
The single most powerful faculty of the human mind is the conscious
use of attention.
Almost always, our attention is directed and focused by forces
outside of our conscious awareness.
Events in the outer world grab our attention.
For instance in this moment your attention may be focused on these
words you are reading.
Or if you look up from reading, you may see something that triggers
a thought.
For an instant your attention was on what you saw,
and then it was quickly redirected to the thought that was triggered
by seeing it.
Perhaps it was the word for the object, its name;
or maybe it was a short story about it, "That's the photograph
of...."
Typically, thoughts trigger other thoughts
and attention dutifully follows the train of thoughts
until another event, a feeling or something else grabs or hooks
your attention,
and so it goes.
All of the practices and exercises on this website have the common
feature
of helping train the Healer's mind
to change the old, conditioned habits of attention
by bringing the faculty of attention itself
under the conscious control of the Healer.
We cannot truly be here for ourselves
until we can assume the authority
of consciously choosing for ourselves
what we pay attention to.
The conditioning that has held habits of attention and imprints
in place is very powerful.
And yet it easily lets go when we take control of our own attention.
One common unconscious habit of attention
has been
to ignore or dismiss bodily sensations while reading.
Another more problematic habit of attention is
to escape from unwanted feelings and sensations by paying attention
to thoughts instead.
The Healer's attention is focused on feelings and
sensations
because that's where the healing is needed.
And ironically it's the attention itself that
heals.
Healing happens
when our loving attention
falls upon a previously unwanted or ignored feeling.
In the deeper layers of ourselves as Beings,
a circle completes
between the Universal Feminine, the root of the feeling
and the Universal Masculine, the attentive lover of the feeling.
In this way humans and Deity work, play and dance together collaboratively
to heal themselves-and in the process, Creation itself.
Directing and Focusing Attention
A camera can be a useful metaphor for the mind's faculty of attention.
We can consciously direct our attention and adjust the focus of
attention,
just as we can change the camera angle and adjust the focus of
the lens.
Attention can be directed either inside of self or outside,
and it can be adjusted to anywhere from laser sharp to soft and
diffuse.
A wide-angle focus allows us to take in the larger picture,
and a sharply focused attention allows us to study something specific
in detail.
Although we have always had the ability to consciously direct
and focus our attention,
this has almost always been an automatic, unconscious process.
Because of the mind's conditioning, it's been happening without
us even realizing we had a choice.
With conscious awareness of our attention comes the possibility
of consciously moving attention from the thoughts and ideas of
mind
toward the feelings and sensations beneath those thoughts.
Also like a camera lens,
we can focus our attention either on what is in the foreground
of awareness
or what's in the background.
As conscious awareness fades into the background,
it goes beyond the range of the lens of attention and becomes
unconscious.
For the Healer and explorer,
the most interesting and helpful aspects of conscious awareness
are found in the deep background of awareness
and in the layers of the unconscious immediately below conscious
awareness,
often referred to as the 'subconscious.'
What happens in our inner process has, for the most part, remained
undetected by our conscious awareness,
or at best kept in the deep background of awareness.
However, as the Healer working to improve our inner process,
we want to refocus our attention on the elements of process formerly
relegated to the background.
For instance, in ordinary consciousness
the words you are reading and their associated thoughts are in
the foreground,
and the way your body feels in the chair is in the background.
As an experiment,
you can continue reading and paying attention to the words and
their meanings
while also feeling whatever bodily sensations are available to
feel in the moment.
This will likely involve reading more slowly for the same level
of comprehension-
while at the same time feeling your body as you read.
Another way to experience refocusing the lens of attention is
to stop reading for a moment,
and when you do-listen to what your mind says about what your
body has been feeling.
Try this now if you like.
You probably heard something like, "I'm feeling _____,"
or "My _____ feels _____."
The main point is that no matter what your mind said, it was a
thought.
By refocusing attention here, we were able to see that it was
just that, a thought;
and that it or a similar thought was in the background
until you stopped to become aware of it.
You consciously refocused attention to observe the thought
rather than unconsciously believing it
or automatically identifying with it.
Identity and Attention
Identification is ordinarily a subtle unconscious process.
Identification happens
whenever our attention is hooked by something occurring inside
of us.
In the ordinary mind,
the perception of a thought is experienced unconsciously as identification
with it.
In other words, ordinarily there is no awareness of having a thought
or of observing it, only a sense of being the thought.
For instance, "I am having a thought that I should be doing
something else right now,"
is ordinarily replaced by the (likely untrue) realization, "I
should be doing something else right now."
Another way of saying this is that within the conditioning of
the ordinary mind,
we have believed our thoughts.
We have unconsciously, automatically believed that what we think
is right and correct, beyond question.
And of course this is almost never true.
Almost all thoughts arise out of habitual, conditioned patterns
that have not been updated since they were first established long
ago-in childhood or earlier.
This is because one of the habitual, conditioned patterns of the
ordinary mind has been
to unconsciously identify with our thoughts.
Whether the thought is true or not has almost always gone unquestioned.
The quick and easy solution to the illusions and delusions created
by unobserved, unquestioned thoughts
is to consciously move our point of view from identification with
the thought,
and instead become the observer of the thought.
When we are not our thoughts we have the power to question them.
"Is it true that I should be doing something else right now?"
can be a good entry to a more present and real identity as the
Healer of myself,
the 'me' who observes and questions my thinking.
The Observer
In the Healer's mind attention continually moves to the position
of observer.
Only when we become observant of ourselves and our process
do we have the power to heal.
In fact, it's the ability to observe thoughts and feelings
that distinguishes you the Healer from the other parts of yourself.
When the Healer hears the buzzer that signals a part of self
is hurting,
you are able to look around to see who is asking for attention.
The quickest and easiest way to do this is
to find where in your body you feel the feeling,
and come into observance of the feeling by feeling into it.
The same can be done with thoughts.
Conditioning has programmed us so that when a thought hooks our
attention,
we become attached to it as if we are entranced by it.
In fact, thoughts can easily create a 'spell'
that takes us away from ourselves
and brings us into alliance with the thought,
almost always to the point that we identity with it as in, "my
thought," or "I think..."
At an unconscious level this ultimately means "I believe_______,
and therefore it's true."
In most of us this line of faulty unconscious reasoning has gone
to
"I am my thought," or rather, "My thought is me."
For example, without any observation or questioning,
"Life is hard," can very easily go from a thought to
a belief,
and become an unquestioned 'fact' with a profound influence on
how my life goes.
Part of my identity is now a person whose life is hard.
.....
Observing the thought, feeling or sensation
with curiosity
immediately breaks the spell.
...
This is where the Healer's mind begins.
When your conscious attention has this self-observing point of
view,
you are in the position of the Healer, the one who can heal all
the rest of you.
And since you, the Healer are observing another part that's hurting,
you are at once both the Healer and the part that is being healed.
The specific healing medicine that the Healer brings in this
work is loving acceptance.
Practicing observing ourselves
and loving what we observe in ourselves is part of every practice
on this website.
For instance, when the Healer rescues the child from a past trauma,
the Healer unconditionally loves the child,
just as she or he is in the moment without having to change in
any way.
And the Healer's motive in coming to help the child in pain
is not only to stop the pain and so we can feel 'good' again.
The Healer's motive is love.
The Healer wants to find and reclaim this previously lost part
of self
so you can be reunited within,
so you can be more whole, so you can be more of
who you truly are.
...
When our minds are able to give our open, honest complete and
unconditional loving acceptance
to the darkest, stinkiest, most desperate and depraved parts of
ourselves
we know we have the right medicine.
We have a loving mind.
We have the Healer's mind
