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A Talk given, by Bubba Free John on May 30, 1976 "the breath is the instrument
whereby the heart and the body and the mind are linked to
the Presence"
DEVOTEE: Is heart-felt attention something you can do? At. times my attention will drift, and then I can return into service by centering in the heart. Is this a valid practice?: BUBBA: It is not a matter of centering. The mind could put its attention on the heart, but this practice is not a matter of attention on the heart, Heartfelt attention is attention from the heart. It is to return to feeling- the Presence e from the heart. It is not a matter of directing the mind toward the center of, from body or the region o the heart itself, as if you are trying to get into your insides or to locate your mind in the heart. Mind must become that attention, the heart must become that attention, the body must become that attention to the Presence. It is not a matter of going within. The process of spiritual-practice is not fundamentally a matter of inwardness. It is a matter of making your functions available as attention to the Divine, which is all-pervading and which is not in your body. The little technique that you just described is a conventional one, a notion of centering, of doing something for yourself. Whereas you must simply be present from the heart. Only in that case, only if you are feeling the Presence from the heart, are you alive in. God. If you are putting the mind in the heart, you are still separate. You are not living in such a Presence. You are inward-turned in that case. Heart-felt attention is return to the position of feeling. You cannot feel from here (pointing to the head). It is impossible. DEVOTEE: It seems that thoughts and obsessive mentalizing can be dropped. Is that something you can actually do? BUBBA: Yes, absolutely. You must do it! One when understanding is made you are your actions no longer a matter of strategic effort The ordinariness of effort and intention must be part of your discipline until you realize the true significance of your own activity. In this stage of practice you must do it and your doing is a response to the Presence, to that Divine nature that you have begun to feel. The Presence may not be known independent of feeling. You cannot think about the Presence. Thought is itself a form of tension, a contraction. When the mind is occupied in thinking, it is no longer-occupied in attention. So the mind must become attention to the Divine through the Name of God. And the heart must come attention to the Divine through feeling. And the body must also become attention to the Presence. Thus the breath is the instrument whereby the heart and the body and the mind are linked to the Presence. All the normal functions of your natural life, your gross life, your ordinary human life, are turned to the Presence through felt attention and the breath. It takes a while to adapt to the process. It is an artful realization, not a technique that you put together in a weekend. Therefore you must adapt to as process a bit at a time, adapt your life to it, adapt the body to it, and adapt the heart, the feeling life to it, adapt the breath to it, adapt the mind to it a bit at a time. And that adaptation depends on maturing in devotion. You must find me first. You must find the Divine Presence. You must find the Company of Divine Communion. That discovery develops through the natural sensitivity that should be there when you have begun to turn out of your ordinary karmic life. People cannot take up the practice of real or spiritual life until they have begun to turn from their ordinary life, from the ordinary random fulfillment of all the complex desires that they were born to realize. You were not born to realize God. You did not have to come here to realize God or to realize the Truth. You were born to satisfy yourself. And you have an endless number of possible desires, some of which even look spiritual or at least conventionally psychic. Only when the mere desiring life has begun to reveal its essential quality is suffering, obsession, mystery, stupidity, unconsciousness only when you have begun to turn away from your desiring life and to become revolted by it will you begin to practice spiritual life truly. That revulsion carries with it the sense that that will make you aware of the Divine Presence. In the first level of the transforming, preparatory life in the Way of Divine Communion the devotee takes on lawful conditions of life and realizes them as service to God, ultimately realizing his entire life of action as such service. The devotee first takes on the practical conditions and studies the Teaching relative to heart-felt attention to the Divine Presence. Over time these disciplines become service to the Divine, in which the Divine is known literally as a Presence. When that realization has begun to appear, then the practice of the recollection of the Divine through the Name of God and the practice of receiving and releasing with the process of breath may be taken up. These spiritual disciplines are a matter of maintaining the mind as felt attention to the Presence of God rather than allowing the mind to wander off distracted. Thus the devotional life is constant attention to the Divine Presence, and participation, through real functional activity, in that Presence. It is a constant test of the born life, because the born life wants to randomly fulfill its conflicting tendencies or desires. The conscious life or the life of spiritual discipline wants to remain in God. Therefore, the Way of Divine Communion is a trial between these two motives. Once the being has become steady in its natural attention to the Divine and the conflicting desires or motivations have weakened, then the higher life of practice, which depends on that prior, commitment and insight, can begin. And when the devotee has artfully adapted to the conditions and responsibilities of the higher stage, then the life at that stage is also fundamentally very simple What may seem by description to be somewhat complicated (although', think it is fairly simple) is realized as a natural constant enjoyment and process from moment to moment. In every moment the mind is attention to the Presence. In every moment the being breathes in that Presence, accepting it as the Reality and the transforming Power, and releasing all conditions to it. Every moment is service through the body to the Divine. Then the individual is truly humanized, moved out of the mere born condition into intuitive enjoyment of the prior Reality. Ultimately the devotee realizes his identity with that prior Reality. But first you must realize your participation in that Reality and become liberated from your commitment to your born possibilities. That process is a trial, a time of testing, because the devotee's inclination is not simply toward God-Realization. He may fundamentally be ready for spiritual practice, but his life is committed to all kinds of worldly and conventional realization. The beginning stage of practice, therefore, is a time of coming and going and up and down and success and failure. Thus in the initial stage it is the responsibility of the individual to live the life disciplines, and the place where he lives it is the world, All the drama, all the up and down and coming and going and success and failure, must have the world scene in which to develop. Although the individual at this stage is not committed to the world, still he lives within the framework of ordinary conventional desiring. And in the theatre of the world he is tested whether he will maintain his commitment to his born possibilities or, maintain his commitment to the Divine and to the Divine Process. Assuming the practical conditions of life is not a negatively serious affair. It is actually a way of abandoning seriousness. Commitment to the gross, desiring life, to the most arbitrary life' of conflict-that is serious. To be free of those conditions of life, to be able to live with one another with energy, to be constantly, alive in the Divine Process which is the undoing of mind, mental conflict, emotional conflict, conflicts through action-is a humorous, delighted, celebrated state of existence. Thus the seriousness implied in assuming such disciplines is not true unless you are basically committed to those things in themselves. As soon as you are free of them, practical disciplines are not really disciplines any longer. They are part of your enjoyment. It is as if you wake up in the morning and you have the condition of not hitting yourself over the head with a hammer in the bathroom. You come out smiling! All the secret little rituals of life that make life conflict and failure and suffering are eliminated in a life of disciplines. You must, in the midst of this spiritual process, discover what is really pleasurable, and if you truly yield your life through the practical and spiritual processes that are given in this Way, then a kind of intoxication begins` to acquire you, an apparent irrationality that is supremely enjoyable. It is enjoyable only if you yield to it completely, however. If you maintain your commitment to little secret aspects of your possibilities, then you will be depressed. But if you fulfill the obligations of your practice completely, you will be intoxicated with the Divine Presence. |
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