Just One Look Forum Archives

Hi John and other. Earlier you have said something like "When you look at something, like a feeling, it disappear". In late podcast you said something like "Learn to steer attention away from pain".

Spiritual enlightened teachers, and modern therapies like ACT, talks about accepting and being present: Stop controlling thoughts and feelings, learn to experience thoughts as just thoughts. That experiential avoidance and mental control is a main cause of added suffering. That thoughts and feelings do not need to have a big impact on life.

Is that the same you're saying?

No. What I am always trying to say is that you are free. You are free to try to control your thoughts and feelings, you are free to try to experience thoughts as thoughts, you are free to try to experience thoughts as experience, you are free to try to experience them as any other mode of experience that you wish, and you are free to try not to think of them or experience them at all. They can't hurt you.

But, if you have accomplished the act of looking just once, you have done all that's needed to rid yourself of the root cause of all neurotic misery and sense of alienation from life. You should expect that life freed of the fog of fear will soon rush in on you and take you by surprise with the richness and force of its nature. The old ways of coping with life's wildness by trying to hold it at arm's length will no longer work, and there may be a period of great confusion and distress at the sheer stark solidity of it all. It is during that period of confusion and distress that anything you do to learn to work with your attention by deliberately trying to move away from negative (or positive experience for that matter) to a neutral experience like breath will be the hardest, and the most effective. If you will just at that moment try to gain some control over the focus of your attention, the strength and clarity of your understanding of the power of attention will begin to grow and take root. Your understanding and skillful ability to control attention, and your understanding of the limitations of your ability to control attention, will flourish and bring a fresh new skillfulness and intelligent self-reliance to your use of the power of attention in service to your experience of your own life as a human being.

So begin training your attention at the first moment you think of it. Move your attention to the breath without concern for whether you are doing it right or whether it will even work - just do it whenever you can. I am certain you will come to see exactly what I am trying to say here.

I hope this helps some, but please let me know if it does not.

Love,

John