What I find is that what I really want is awakening. No matter what the surface intention or want is, when I look at it and peel back the layers, I find that it always goes back to a desire for awakening. For coming home, truth, freedom from suffering, a quiet joy, of all awakening to itself as Ground.

And I also find that many sides of my don’t want awakening. Instead, I want all the surface wants. The shorter term things that enhance this separate I. Yet, these are false - insubstantial - wants. Mirages that appear when I take a story as true.

So as long as I am not clear on my real motivations, there is a mix of the two. I sincerely want to awaken. But I also want to enhance this separate I in different ways. Which is why it is so helpful to clarify motivation. It helps see through the surface motivations, see that they each are mirages created from taking stories as true, and that each of them lead back to the essential desire for awakening.

There are so many practices that are complete - or sufficient - in themselves. And this seems to be one of them. The process itself takes us right to awakening.

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The basic Buddhist pointer of living for the benefit of all beings has a great deal of different effects.

It places my life in a larger context. It reminds me that I am a part of this world, of this larger social and ecological whole. It is not all about me.

It helps me see that my life not only influences myself but also everyone around me and rippling out from there in ways I cannot know.

It brings a shift from working against situations (complaining, resistance, victim role, making someone wrong, sense of drama) to working with situations (receptivity, open heart, sense of ease and simplicity, practical solution focus).

It invites in a sincere well-wishing for all of me and the larger whole. (If there is well-wishing here, it meets whatever happens in this human self and the wider world.)

It helps me see that just a small shift here, even just in intention, is a shift in the world as a whole. It brings about a shift in how I relate to myself and the wider world, and that benefits myself and those around me, and ripples out from there. It helps me appreciate the value and effect of small moves.

It may look like a noble aim, but it is really just a very practical and simple tool. It makes my life much simpler and easier in daily life.

In practical terms, it is a simple prayer or a setting of intention: May this practice benefit all beings. May whatever I am doing benefit all beings. May this life benefit all beings.

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A small additional detail in what I notice when exploring intention through the sense fields.

First, when I explore moods (atmosphere), I find that they are made up of sensations and thoughts. Just as emotions, pain, and so many other experiences. Sensations in a specific area of the body create the quality of a specific mood, and these are then enhanced by mental images and more, and interpreted and labeled as well.

If the particular sensations needed for a particular mood is not stable or strong, the muscles in that area tense up to create clearer, stronger and more stable sensations to create the experience of the mood.

With emotions, I notice that - for instance - a belief is triggered which brings up sadness. This sense of sadness is created by tightening certain muscles in the chest, which bring up certain sensations there, which in turn are combined with a mental image of sinking (so there is a sinking feeling in the chest), and there is the interpretation or label “sadness”. All of this creates the experience of sadness, and it seems very real and substantial, unless I notice how it is created here now.

The same happens with moods, which seem to be vague or more complex emotions, and maybe combinations of several.

And when I explore intention, I notice how also intentions are made up of sensations combined with the mental field. Muscles tense up to create sensations which then, combined with images and interpretations, create a sense of intention.

I have an intention to get up and open the door to let in fresh air. The sensation aspect comes from is a slight tightening in the back of the mouth, the mental aspect is an image of myself getting up and opening the door, and if I bring attention to it, there is also the label “intention” to the gestalt created by both of those. The slight tension of the muscles in the back of the mouth gives a sense of determination, and also power or energy, an ability to do it. (The back of the tonge presses gently to the roof of the mouth, and the muscles in the roof tighten slightly.)

And these two - moods and intention - combine as well. An intention is often associated with a particular mood, for instance of anticipation, excitement, bliss, lightness, fear, drudgery or heaviness. Sometimes, the same sensations serves as the sensation component of both the mood and the intention, and sometimes these are different sets of sensations.

For instance, an intention that is associated with bliss (Breema, for me), has as intention component the familiar slight tightening of the muscles in the back of the mouth, and the mood component is the sensation of air flowing through my nostrils.

When I notice this, there is a sense of all experiences being very simple in their components, and also a growing familiarity with how each particular one is created.

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During the retreat, I also explored how intention shows up in the sense fields.

What I find, as so often, is a sensation and a mental image.

In general, intention shows up as a slight tightening of certain muscles in the throat. And a mental image related to the intention, either a direction, a goal, or some intermediate stages.

When I explored intention of moving parts of the body, I noticed how attention goes to the limbs I want to move, and specifically sensations in the areas closest to where I intend to move them. Almost like where imaginary puppet strings would be fastened.

I also noticed how intention seems to be the easiest and most effective way of honing a stable attention. When it is distracted to some extent, sharpening up the intention seems to help.

There is of course a lot more to the effects of intention - such as how it helps align the different parts of us in a certain direction - and some of it is explored in other posts.

When a question comes up for me that seems important enough, whether it is about some of the topics mentioned here or in my life in general, I sometimes plant it as a seed. I bring in the belly center, and sometimes the heart center, and invite an answer to emerge later on. And it always (?) does, sometimes immediately, sometimes after some minutes or hours, and sometimes within days or weeks or even months.

It is similar to planting a seed… making sure the conditions are right (a quiet and sincere intention, bringing in the three centers, and staying with it for a while), and then allowing it to grow at its own schedule and waiting for it to emerge on its own.

The answers are of course only of temporary and limited value, as anything else, but still useful in that limited sense.

A friend of mine and her partner has recently bought a piece of land in a rural area, and have a general store and a small farm. The area is full of rednecks and some of them are in the store, ready to be offended by anything my friends may say or do. As they try to trigger a confrontation, my friend’s partner behaves in an unusual way - singing fragments of odd songs and mumbling in a not very coherent manner - which confuses the rednecks and diffuses the situation. They leave, and my friend’s partner now becomes a smart and coherent person again. I realize it was a trick and one of the few strategies that may have worked to diffuse the tension. The rednecks had strong beliefs, were not open for any genuine exchanges or conversations, and were ready to be offended by even the most innocent remark or behavior.

About five days ago I set the intention for deep beliefs to be resolved. Beliefs that sit in the body, below the level of my usual attention, giving rise to a sense of pride and inferiority, a sense of separate self, etc. Every night since then, there has been a long string of dreams with a nightmarish quality, indicating that something is definitely being sorted out at a deeper level. This is the first one where I remember some of the content.

The rednecks in the dream were irrational, strongly wedded to their beliefs, not willing to engage in any real conversation, and looking for any opportunity for a fight. And that seems to reflect how those deep beliefs function… ready to be triggered, outside of what it is normally possible to dialog with. The dream may also indicate a little more consciousness in that area, since my friend (who is a friend from real life, and someone who would do just such a thing) and her partner had recently bought land there and set up a store, and they apparently are smart and skilled enough to make it work.

Intention is one of my staple practices, in different forms. One is to ask to be shown (by life) what I am not seeing, what I need to see, what stands between me and Big Mind, and so on.

I did this before falling asleep the second night at the Crater Lake trip, and I got exactly what I had asked for…

The trip up until then had been very comfortable, easy and enjoyable, with a sense of headlessness and no separate self coming and going and never far away.

That night, a storm came through and the temperature dropped significantly (in itself fine since I have a good tent, wool underwear and a mountaineering sleeping bag), the air went out of my thermarest, and my body heat got sucked into the ground. Normally, all of this would have been fine and workable, but instead, old and ingrained patterns of resistance got triggered and came right up to the surface… resisting it all, being annoyed with everything, everything feeling wrong… and then, after having resolved the cold issue, the dream about my relatives being insane and believing their own stories, just as I had done that night.

I got exactly what I asked for. I got to see patterns that are still there, although often not triggered or so mild that I don’t notice or can easily brush it off. It is sobering and humbling, and although I was certainly not grateful when it all came up full force and I was completely in the grips of it, the gratefulness came up later on. There is nothing more precious than seeing where I am still stuck… Seeing where the gold is, behind the ugly facade.

One of the simples and most transformative ways I have found to work with what is happening is…

1. Intention for it to resolve, clarify, for harvesting nutrients from it

2. Surrendering it to the mystery, to the divine, to the larger whole, to God, to Spirit, to Source, to Buddha Mind, to Existence, to the deeper wisdom, to my own nature

I connect with Source, and give it over to the divine. And in that, it transforms, unravels, clarifies - in ways I consciously could not have predicted. Whatever comes up, is surrendered. Including any identifications, any sense of stuckness, any insights, any sense of understanding, any sense of knowing. It is all surrendered.

This is another simple path, safe, contains its own directions, allowing it all to move along. It invites the wheel to continue to turn. And it works at any and all levels, from my human self through to the Ground.

Changes often seem to follow intention. In my own life, I see how there is an intention to find clarity about something - and it then unfolds.

So one thing it the insight itself (apparently a little more clear than before, although there is always further to go). And the other is the intention to live it, to live the insights - to allow my life to align with and be informed by them. It seems that also here, a clear intention is very helpful.

It seems to provide the nudge to allow it to actually happen, to allow the insights to come to fruition in this life. Until there is more clarity, other insights, which in turn come to fruition. And so on.

Seasons upon seasons.

One of the common features of most (?) spiritual traditions is guidelines for how to be with experiences. Here are some I am aware of…

Zen

Allow experiences to come and go as guests. This shifts the center of gravity to the witness, and allows for deepening detachment and insight into the general processes and patterns of the content of mind.

Breema

See, accept and move on.

This allows for shifting the center of gravity to the witness, and release clutching of content.

Can I be with it?

A particularly elegant approach is that of Raphael Cushnir. Whenever there are strong experiences coming up, or any other time, ask yourself - can I be with what I am experiencing right now?

This also shifts the center of gravity to the witness (or at least expands it to include the witness), and it allows the processes of the content to unfold and unwind on their own.

Recognition yoga

This is from Waking Down and I don’t remember the steps here… But it is something along the lines of see it, feel it, become it, and live it (and something more I am sure).

Release to the divine

In our deeksha group, we use a process which is very similar to what came up spontaneously for me during the initial awakening. Fully feel it, and fully release it to the divine.

The difference between this approach and many others is the intention. In Zen, they rarely speak about intention. But here, intention is included to offer it to the divine, and allow the divine to take care of and resolve it.

My experience is that this is a remarkably effective process, and one that deepens with time.

Unfolding the process

Yet another approach is that of Process Work. Here, the immense wisdom in every process is acknowledged, and the profound gifts behind any experience - including or maybe especially the difficult ones, are recognized. Through following the bread crumbs, the process behind the symptom (which could be anything within the field of experience, including disturbing and difficult ones) is unraveled, leading to often surprising insights and gifts.

Dimensions

I am not familiar enough with all of these to say much of the various dimensions, or to compare the various approaches in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. Each of them seem to have its place, its own valuable contributions.

Some dimensions which come to mind…

• Shifting center of gravity to the witness, or expanding it to include the witness.

  There is a subtle difference here, yet maybe important. The first encourages a slightly stronger sense of separation than the second.

• Emphasizing the release from content, insight into the processes, and/or digging into the content.

  All of these emphasize a certain release from content - either in the present (most of them) or after a certain process (Waking Down, Process Work). Some emphasize insight into the processes and others don’t. Among those focusing on insight, some emphasize a more general insights into the patterns of the content (Zen), and others emphasize insight into the particular process arising in the present (Process Work).

• No intention apart from the seeing of it, or intention of offering it (back) to the divine and have it more actively resolved.

  Zen is a good example of a tradition where the active use of intention is not much emphasized. The other end of the spectrum is the way we do it in our deeksha group, actively offering the processes to the divine - with the intention of allowing the divine to work on it, allowing it to unravel and find a resolution. Most are somewhere in between these two.