#living infinity

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Living Infinity - third draft (Pai, December, 2004)

LIVING INFINITY.

  ASPECT ONE: ATTENTION.

  The exercises of this book require effort on your part. The first effort required of you is to develop a new form of attention. The work on all the subsequent Aspects will be dependent upon your having this attention.

  Exercise One: developing a new form of attention.

  This exercise should be done in a quiet environment, free of distractions. Begin by observing the flow of respiration as it comes in and goes out of your nostrils. You want to observe your breathing continuously without forgetting about this. Try and remain aware of your breath continuously for about a minute. Now at the same time that you observe your respiration, also observe the attention observing the respiration. Here you direct attention in two ways: towards the object of attention and towards attention itself. Try and observe both of these continuously for about a minute.

  Keeping your attention established as shown above, now begin to observe the entirety of the body, inside and outside. Here you want to observe the body sensations, the body organs, the digestion, the circulation, the skeleton, the muscles; the entire physiology of the body. The respiration is also part of the body’s physiology. At the same time that you observe the entire physiology of the body, also observe the attention observing the physiology. Try and observe both of these continuously for about a minute.

  With your attention focussed as shown above, now begin to observe the sensory experiences that are happening. Here you want to observe the sights you see, the sounds you hear, the smells you smell, and the tastes you taste. (Although there are now many objects of attention, your attention still continues to be directed in only two ways: towards the objects of attention and towards attention itself.) Try to observe the entirety of your physiology and your surroundings at the same time as you observe attention observing all of this. Try to develop attention in this manner continuously for about a minute.

  With your attention developed as shown above, now begin to observe whatever body movements are happening, any expressions that are happening such as your facial expressions, and the body posture. Here you want to observe what body parts are in motion, and how the body is situated as these movements take place. If no parts of the body are being moved, then you can observe the overall posture of the body, and any expressions taking place. At the same time that you observe your body movements, expressions, and posture, also observe your physiology and your surroundings, as well as the attention observing all of them. Try and observe all of these continuously for about a minute.

  With your attention established as shown above, now begin to observe whatever thoughts and emotions might be happening. Thoughts can include inner-thinking, mental pictures, and the combination of these. There are two types of emotions: feelings and interests. Feelings include being comfortable, relaxed, irritated, nervous, enthusiastic, intrigued, sceptical, confused, and so on; interests are a liking or disliking towards something. Try to observe the thoughts and emotions you may experience as well as your physiology, surroundings, and body movements, expressions and posture; and at the same time observe the attention observing all of this. Try to have this attention continuously for as long as you are able to give your time for this exercise.

  When your attention is established in this way, and you are aware of your thoughts, emotions, body movements, expressions and posture, physiology, and surroundings all at the same time, then you now have a new form of attention. As long as you actually have this attention, then you also understand what attention is. Every reference in this book to attention will from now on be in regards to this new attention. This means that this word should have a new meaning to you whenever you see it written in these pages.

  End of exercise one.

  Exercise Two: developing attention in every situation you experience.

  Begin with establishing attention in a quiet environment. Once attention is established, then try and complete some simple activity with attention. If you are sitting down, then stand up and go and drink a glass of water, and then again sit down in the same place. Before you even stand up, you have to make an extra effort to remember attention as you go through the movements of standing up. You want attention to be as distinct as possible, for you to observe all the sides of your experience (including attention itself) as you stand up and then begin walking. Entering a different room, getting the glass, turning on and off the faucet, drinking the water, putting the glass down, returning to where you began, there are countless different activities going on here that can distract you from clearly having attention. Once you have sat down, reflect on what happened with your attention as you completed the simple activity. Look for what was happening when you forgot to observe certain parts of your experience, or perhaps lost attention altogether. Again establish your attention, and choose another simple activity to do with this attention. Look at how able you were to keep attention this time, and what caused you to lose it. This exercise can be repeated as many times as you like.

  Attention needs to be developed in every situation you experience, and not only in the simple activities. The next time you go to use your computer, to use the Internet, first establish attention and observe what happens to your attention as you also use the computer. Whenever you notice that you have entirely lost attention, or have merely a small awareness of a few parts of your experience, then take a moment to sit back and re-connect with attention. When you again begin using the computer, really make an effort to keep attention with you, and be on the watch for when it begins to slip away. As you repeatedly lose attention and re-establish attention, eventually you will begin to realize more clearly what you need to do to keep attention with you. This exercise needs to be done with every situation you experience. Regardless of what the situation is, first establish your attention, and then watch to see what happens that makes attention slip away, and try to learn something from this.

  End of exercise two.

  Exercise Three: making the body receptive.

  You need your body to be receptive so that it assists you in making efforts. When your body is tense, stressed, over-active, lethargic, then this becomes a barrier to your work. This three-part exercise is to change the relationship you have with your body, so that you are capable of making the efforts each exercise requires. The first few times you do this exercise, do so in a quiet environment, and take around thirty minutes or so to complete it. Once you gain some experience with realizing how receptive your body is to your making efforts, you will learn what circumstances are suitable for working on it, and how long is needed before you are ready to begin the other exercises.

  The first part of this exercise is to relax the entire body. Start with the muscles of your face. Relax the scalp, forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks, ears, lips, tongue, and chin. Relax the entire face. This relaxation should feel very comfortable and pleasant to you. Next relax your neck, throat, diaphragm, esophagus, chest, and abdomen. The entire torso should now be experienced in a relaxed way. Then bring your attention onto the right shoulder, and relax the shoulder, the upper arm, the elbow, the forearm, the wrist, the palm, and each of the fingers down to their tips. Then do the same with the left shoulder, upper arm, elbow, forearm, wrist, palm, and fingers. Next relax your right thigh, upper leg, knee, lower leg, ankle, sole, and each of toes down to their tips. And then do the same with the left leg. Repeat this entire sequence a few more times, doing it a little more quickly, and this time moving from the head to the feet and  from the feet to the head. Now spend a few minutes experiencing the entire body, inside and outside, in this relaxed manner at once.

  Now follow the same path as above, but this time sensing the different sensations on the body. Begin with whatever sensation is on the scalp area. The sensation may be heat, perspiration, itching, tingling, flowing, pressure; whatever you experience on this part of the body is a sensation. Then sense whatever sensations are in your face area, the forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks, ears, lips, tongue, and chin. Then sense the sensation along your torso, on the surface and inside the body: the throat, neck, diaphragm, esophagus, chest, and abdomen. Next sense the sensations in your right arm, beginning with the shoulder and moving down to the fingertips. And then do the same with the left arm. Next sense the sensations in your right leg, beginning with the thigh and moving down to the toes. And do the same with the left leg. Repeat this entire sequence a few more times, more quickly this time, moving from the head to the feet and from the feet to the head. Now spend a few minutes experiencing the entire body, inside and outside, by sensing all the different sensations at one time.

  Now observe the sensation in the soles of your feet. Concentrate on this sensation until you actually experience it becoming more pronounced. Allow these sensations to get stronger and stronger. After a few minutes, allow the sensation to travel up the feet, and begin to flow up the legs. You experience this as you might a vessel filling up with water. Allow the sensation to continue up the legs, and begin to fill up the torso. When your body is filled up to the shoulders, then observe the sensation in the fingers and palms of both hands. Concentrate on this sensation until it as strong and pronounced as it was with the feet. When the sensations are quite distinct, allow them to travel up the arms, filling the arms up to the shoulders. Then allow the sensations that have filled up the legs and torso to join with the sensations from the hands and arms, and allow these sensations to fill up the shoulders, the neck, and then the entire head. Once the body has been filled up with these sensations, again quickly move from the feet up to the head to see that sensation is experienced evenly throughout the entire body. Now spend a few minutes experiencing the entire body, inside and outside.

  You should be experiencing your body in a new way at this point. The body is now relaxed and filled with sensation, and its entirety all at once is experienced in a distinctly present way. Your body should now be receptive to whatever efforts you are working on. Once you have some more familiarity with this exercise, then make the effort to complete it through establishing attention first, and trying to keep attention throughout the duration of the exercise.

  End of exercise three.

  ASPECT TWO: STATE.

  The aim of developing attention is to experience all the parts of your experience at the same time and in a particular way: to observe attention as you observe the whole of your experience. This kind of observation has a unique and verifiable effect upon attention. Attention is now experienced throughout the body and your surroundings. A wide and spacious experience results in which you have a new relationship with what is happening. This is what it is like to live in the state of attention. Before you had this attention, you were living in a different state, the state of identification.

  Exercise One: recognizing the state of identification from the state of attention.

  Begin by entering the state of attention. In the state of attention you are continuously aware of all the parts of your experience, including attention itself. You observe what is going on within and around you, and observe the attention that is doing the observing. Keep making efforts to have this sort of attention, until you notice that you have forgotten to observe one of the parts of your experience. Perhaps you have forgotten to observe sounds, to observe thoughts, or to observe the physiology. When you notice this has happened, then you can recognize that this part of your experience is no longer in the state of attention. The state of attention requires a constant effort on your part, and the moment you stop making efforts then the state immediately begins to change. The reason you forgot to observe some part of your experience was because you stopped making the efforts required. The part of your experience that is happening without attention is now taking place in a different state. It is taking place in the state of identification.

  The state of identification needs no effort to live in. It is the state that you live in when you aren’t making any efforts to live in the state of attention. The state of attention will not come about by itself naturally, whereas the state of identification is the natural state you live in. Identification is a very comfortable state, because you have lived in it your entire life. As you try to live in the state of attention, quite naturally the different parts of your experience will slip back into the comfortable state where no efforts are required. An extra effort is required from you in order to keep each part in the state of attention.

  In the state of attention you are aware of all the parts of your experience at once. Look at what happens to this state if, while you are in it, the telephone rings. Unless you make an enormous effort to keep living in this state, then you will immediately fall into identification. What will become relevant for you is: the sound of the telephone ringing, you going to answer it, and a curiosity about who is calling. Three or four parts of your experience will be relevant, and these will not be observed along with the observation of attention. In the state of identification, the entirety of your experiences is reduced down to the minimum parts required, and at no time is attention also observed along with these parts.

  You can only recognize the state of identification from the state of attention. Once you are in the state of identification, you can’t recognize you are in it because you are it. Only by hearing about the state of attention, or reading about it, and later on by a memory of it infiltrating your identified state, can you recognize that there is another state available to you if you make the efforts to change your state. If you are in the state of attention, and stop making efforts, then automatically the state will begin changing: one part of your experience after another will cease being observed and the observation of attention along with them.

  End of exercise one.

  Exercise Two: living in the state of attention.

  First you need to realize that you are living in the state of identification; second to make efforts to change your state by living in the state of attention; and third to continuously live in the state of attention by not falling into the state of identification. The state of attention always exists precariously perched over the state of identification. The latter acts like a magnet upon the former, in order to eat what the state of attention has taken away from it. It is here that a conscious separation of these two states needs to be made by you. Such a conscious separation can only take place when you are aware of both of these states at the same time. This means that you need to observe all the parts of your experience, the attention observing all these parts, and at the same time to observe the ever-threatening state of identification. The observation of these two states at the same time, the relationship in which they stand to one another, is an essential addition to the state of attention.

  Another essential addition to the state of attention is to understand the distractions you experience in a new way. When we try to make efforts but from within the state of identification, which means that the majority of the parts of our experience are not being observed, then a wrong effort is made. This effort may make you feel better, but it is not helping you develop how you live in the state of attention. A right effort is made from within the state of attention. Once you are already in this state, then you can deal with distractions in a new way. A distraction is something that causes you to forget to observe one or more parts of your experience, which means a change in the state of this part: from attention to identification. A thought, a sensation, a sound, none of these are distractions unless they make you lose your ability to observe them with attention. If you are in the state of attention, then whatever happens is experienced as one part of the whole and not as the whole itself. In the state of identification a single noise, a single thought, can occupy the entirety of your experience. But in the state of attention each part of your experience is experienced along with all the other parts, and no one part is taken as being the whole. The whole of your experience is always there at once, and there is a spaciousness to this whole that you can use to not get caught up in any one part. When a thought, a sensation, or a sound is particularly pressing upon you, and you are in the state of attention, then you experience it from the spaciousness of the whole, and this takes the pressure off.

  Another essential addition to the state of attention is your remembering why you are making the effort to live in this state. You are making such an effort because you have seen what is available for you when you live in the state of identification. In that state you have a limited number of options, of possibilities, open to you. None of the exercises of this book are available to you. In the state of attention you have a new range of options and possibilities available to you, including making efforts on the exercises of this book. The possibility for you to change, to be different than how you are now, becomes a real possibility once you live in the state of attention.

  End of exercise two.

  ASPECT THREE: MIND.

  When you are in the state of attention, the one constant effort required of you is to keep hold of the state. As soon as you stop making efforts, the state will change automatically to the state of identification. A constant effort is needed to separate these two states, and to remember to observe the entirety of your experience along with observing attention itself. For as long as you are able to accomplish this, then you can begin to take an additional workload upon yourself. Each Aspect requires you take more work upon yourself, yet while building upon the Aspects already in place. The workload of this third Aspect is to observe what you experience in a more detailed manner.

  Exercise One: observing your experiences through the four centres of mind.

  All the different parts of your experience will now be systematically organized into four main parts. These four parts will be referred to as the different centres of mind. Begin by establishing attention, and being aware of the state of identification. Here you are observing all the parts of your experience including attention.

  Now particularly observe the physiology: respiration, circulation, digestion, the skeleton, muscles, sensations; and the sensory experiences of your surroundings: what you see, hear, smell, and taste. When you are experiencing this along with observing your attention, then understand this to be the instinctive centre of mind.

  Next observe whatever body movements are being made, the body expressions, as well as the body posture, along with the observation of attention. When you are experiencing this then understand this to be the moving centre of mind.

  Next observe whatever thoughts you are having, the mental pictures you experience, and the combination of them both. When you are experiencing this along with observing your attention, then understand this to be the intellectual centre of mind.

  Next, observe whatever emotional feeling you are experiencing, such as being determined, optimistic, jealous, fearful, lustful, cheerful, upset, and so on; and whatever emotional interests you are experiencing: what you like and what you dislike. When you are experiencing these along with observing your attention, then understand these to be the emotional centre of mind.

  Now spend five minutes moving from one centre to another, looking at what you experience from the standpoint of each centre. Spend about thirty seconds on each centre, until you are able to clearly observe this part of your experience and at the same time to observe attention.

  Finally, spend as much time as you have available to observe what you are experiencing through the four centres of mind at the same time. Here you are developing the state of attention but with a new organization to what you are observing. You now want to observe all the parts of your experience by way of these four centres, and to observe attention itself as you do this.

  End of exercise one.

  Exercise Two: observing the connections between the centres of mind.

  Up to this point you have been observing the parts of your experience without looking at the connections between each part. Once you are observing your experiences through the four centres of mind, then you can begin to observe how the parts of your experience connect with one another. This begins a new effort of self-study. You can now study how what happens in one centre influences what goes on in the other centres. For example, when the state of identification claims one centre, then it is more than likely to begin claiming the others as well.

  Begin by establishing the centres within your attention. Now you want to remain aware of the state you are in, and at the same time watching for how the state of identification will move in to reclaim its turf. Every time you notice an identification arising in one of the centres, you need to understand what it would mean to identify with it and what it will mean if you don’t identify with it, and to make a separation of these two states by using the spaciousness that comes when you are aware of the whole. As you gain some skill in this type of observation, you will notice that identifications often arise in more than one centre at once. A certain thought may often be accompanied by a certain emotional feeling. A certain sound may often result in a certain facial expression. A certain sensation may often entail a certain emotional interest. And quite often three centres are involved at the same time. A certain thought is accompanied by a certain emotional feeling and a certain sensation. A certain sound results in a certain facial expression and a certain emotional interest. And sometimes all four centres are involved at the same time. A certain thought will be accompanied by a certain feeling, a certain sensation, and certain body movements. A certain sound will result in a certain facial expression, a certain emotional interest, and a certain thought.

  Sometimes you will notice an identification arising in the centres and not identify with it. Other times you will notice you are identified only after it has been happening for some time. In either case, you want to learn how to recognize the centres involved, and notice which centre is more predominant, which one started first. Perhaps you are in the state of attention for a few minutes, and then suddenly some thoughts start, you become identified with the thoughts, and then you fall into the state of identification. After a few minutes you realize that this has happened, and then look to see what took place in the centres. At first you only notice the thoughts, and that the thoughts caused you to forget about the state of attention. The initial identification took the form of thought, but then the other three centres also fell to identification. Once the thoughts started, then an emotional interest immediately developed, different bodily sensations began, and you made certain body movements, expressions, and postures that corresponded with all this. And when all four centres get involved, then the state of attention is entirely lost to you.

  The effort that is required here is to constantly observe the state of attention through all four centres, and to observe what happens in the different centres whenever something happens in one centre. If you can notice when an identification is beginning in one centre, then you can notice how the other centres will begin to try and support that identification, and to make an effort to keep attention separate from identification. When you gain more experience in making these efforts, then you can quickly realize that a certain activity in one centre will lead to a certain activity in the other centres. The sight of someone drinking coffee leads you to think about having one yourself, and then an emotional interest develops, and your body moves in that direction. The thought of some argument you had with another person leads to an emotional feeling of anger or frustration, and then heavy and unpleasant sensations are felt in your stomach, and then your facial expressions become tenser as you play out the drama. When you are able to notice how what happens in one centre affects what will happen in the others, then you are able to make an effort to not let the identification spread beyond one or two centres, and immediately begin making efforts to re-establish the state of attention.

  End of exercise two.

  Exercise Three: observing reaction.

  Your mind has spent its entire lifetime working within the state of identification. This means that there never came a time where your mind worked continuously from within the state of attention. And this means that there never came a time where you put intentional efforts into organizing the shape of your mind. Your mind is a product of your lifetime experiences, but not of your conscious and intentional efforts upon making it into a form of your own choosing. In the state of identification, the mind works with reaction. Observing reaction is an essential addition to the state of attention. Along with all the other efforts you are making, you now also need to observe your reactions to what is experienced.

  Begin by experiencing the state of attention that observes the four centres of mind as detailed above. This means that all the exercises so far presented are all part of your understanding at the same time. If you lose the thread connecting all the exercises, then return to the first exercise and start again. Now at the same time that you are aware of the entirety of your experience through the centres, begin to observe each individual part of each centre to notice what reaction is taking place in each part as well as in the whole. Here you spend a few seconds observing what you are looking at, and then observe the reaction taking place in each of the centres, as well as all the centres at once. Then you observe what you are hearing for a few seconds, and then the reaction in the centres. You do this with what you smell, taste, think, with sensations, movements, thoughts, emotional feelings, and emotional interests. And how do you observe reaction?

  First you observe what you are looking at, then you observe how each centre is responding to what is seen. You notice you are looking at a car that has pollution coming from it. Then you observe the intellectual centre: you are thinking about how careless the driver must be; you observe the emotional centre: you have an emotional feeling of irritation, and an emotional interest of disliking the person driving the car; you observe the moving centre: your body is positioned in a way to observe the car driving off; you observe the instinctive centre: you have some unpleasant sensations in your chest, a clogged sensation in your lungs, you are smelling the pollution, perhaps you can taste it, you are looking at the car, and listening to the sounds of traffic. And the entire time you observe attention itself. Everything you observe is your reaction to what you were looking at. So in answer to the question, How do you observe reaction? You observe reaction by looking at what is going on in all the parts of your experience at once. For how you are responding to the situation is through your reaction to it, and now you are learning how to observe this reaction.

  You can use this exercise any time you notice an identification taking place in one of the centres. Perhaps you have just noticed that you are itching some sensation that is bothering you. If you are in an isolated place then immediately freeze your body just as it is. At first glance there appears to only be two centres involved: the sensation of instinctive centre and the arm scratching the sensation of moving centre. Yet you want to observe all four centres at the same time. Begin to observe how each centre is participating in this, how every centre is in the state of reaction. Certain thoughts may be going on, an emotional dislike of the sensation and a like for itching it, a certain emotional feeling, the movement of scratching itself, and then the entire instinctive centre including the sensation itself. And then the observation of attention itself throughout.

  End of exercise three.

  Exercise Four: establishing equanimity in the emotional centre.

  The mind is a place where reaction takes place. Whatever you experience comes in contact with the mind, with its four centres, which then assign the meaning to the experience that you have been familiar with your entire lifetime. Your mind is not a place where new meanings are given to each thing that you experience. You are already reorganizing the form of your mind with these exercises. You now experience your mind from the state of attention and as structured into four centres. Now you will need to build a new addition to the emotional centre whose function is to change how the mind works.

  Begin with establishing the state of attention, and be on watch for whatever takes place in each of the centres. As soon as a thought starts, you immediately notice it. As soon as an interest happens, right away you are aware of it. With everything experienced you observe both what is happening and the reaction to it. Now when you are able to do this, then at the same time that you are aware of the whole, make yourself at home in the emotional centre where interests are experienced. You now want to handle everything you experience from this part of the emotional centre. Whatever happens, you want to look at whether a liking or a disliking results.

  To observe likes and dislikes brings us to the very heart of how the mind reacts. To change how the mind works, you need to change how the heart of the mind works. The emotional interests are involved in every activity in every part of each centre. The thoughts you are thinking take place along with a liking or a disliking to what they are saying. The emotional feeling you have carries with it a liking or disliking of its mood. The sensations you experience are constantly liked or disliked by this part of the emotional centre. To change how the mind works, you need to change how this centre works. This is possible through establishing equanimity towards these likes and dislikes.

  Equanimity is the act of non-identification towards liking and disliking. You attentively observe your likes and dislikes towards whatever is experienced, and then do not identify with them. To not identify with them means that you observe the likes and dislikes and do not allow a reaction to take place towards them. In the place of liking and disliking you establish equanimity, which is to observe without reacting to what is observed. Equanimity is established in the emotional centre at the exact middle point between the emotional interests of liking and disliking

  From the state of attention you notice a series of thoughts beginning in the intellectual centre. You then observe these thoughts with equanimity, without liking the thoughts and without disliking the thoughts. The thoughts are then not reacted to, and are not identified with. From this additional point within the state of attention, you do not have to participate in these thoughts or find them to be distractions. The thoughts are experienced in the same way that you might experience a sound that does not bother you. They are simply just happening for some time before they stop happening.

  This exercise requires a modification to how you have set up the state of attention. At the same time that you observe all the parts of your experience, including attention, through the four centres, and consciously keep an eye on the state of identification, you situate the core of your attention in the equanimity established in the emotional interests part of the emotional centre. When you understand that everything experienced is done so with equanimity, then the mind is prevented from giving the same meaning to each thing that you experience, and the possibility for new meanings to be given now becomes available.

  End of exercise four.

  ASPECT FOUR: SELF.

  The state of attention now includes all of the exercises done to this point. This Aspect looks to locate the self within the four centres of mind. Once you are able to observe what a self looks like, then you can observe how you are not one but many different selves. A new kind of effort is now required to begin a total revaluation of what it means to not have a single self. Once you understand this, then you can begin to play with your relationship to each self, and finally in Aspect Five to bring about selves that serve your interests.

  Exercise One: observing what a self looks like.

  This exercise is meant to give you an idea of what a self looks like. The actual sense of selfhood you experience will vary across different situations. At one extreme, a self exists as a vague thing at the background of your experience. Such a self is not really even aware of itself at all, but is a thread upon which experiences happen. You won’t ever notice this self unless you search for it in a certain way. At the other extreme, a self exists as a very vivid sense of ‘I am the one to whom these experiences are happening’. This self may feel like it is the one directing things, doing the thinking, to whom the emotional state is happening, who is moving the body. You will find that the word ‘I’ is constantly thought the head, and there is a very noticeable emotional feeling of the self. An entire range of selves exist within this spectrum.

  A self is something that believes what is being experienced is happening to it. Certain activities are happening in the four centres, and a self believes it is who is experiencing and overseeing these activities. As long as this self is around, it is absolutely real because you are totally identified with it. It is absolutely real because it is who you are. Then you must do and say and think and feel everything that it wants you to. And as long as it believes it is a real living being, then it has real feelings, a real history, and real sufferings. Its power as a self lies precisely in how you become so completely identified with it due to how it identifies itself with everything happening in the centres. And it is because all four centres are feeding this self its life that it believes it is real.

  One defining characteristic of a self is that it never has to define itself in order to believe it exists. It never has to acknowledge that it is actually your self. If you had a distinct relationship with some one chosen self, then you would all the time be aware that you had chosen this self to be your self. Yet you have never chosen a self to be your self, and so within the state of identification any self at all can claim to be your self and get away with it.

  End of exercise one.

  Exercise Two: observing how you have many selves

  You might believe that you have only one self, the self that has grown up through your childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. This belief belongs to the state of identification. In the state of attention, you observe yourself as being made up of many selves. Some of these selves want you to change and grow, others want you to make money and be successful, while others want you to be unhappy and miserable. First of all you need to recognize that you are many selves and not just one.

  Begin by remembering the last time things did not go according to your expectations. Try and get a picture of what happened using all four centres of mind. Perhaps you were in the shower, moving your arms and hands through your hair washing it, thinking certain thoughts about your plans for today, having an emotional feeling of anticipation, with an emotional interest of liking the sensation of your hands on your scalp, with the sensations of hot water on the body, hearing the sound of the water. For some reason the water pressure changes, and the water turns off. Immediately all the parts of your experience change. You immediately have different thoughts, a different emotional feeling, different emotional interests, different body movements, and you experience your physiology and your surroundings in an entirely different way. The self that was enjoying the shower has disappeared, it is no longer real for the experiences that were happening to it are no longer going on. And now a different self is there, who is very real because it is facing its own particular experiences that are happening to it. These two selves never meet one another, because they cannot both be real at the same time.

  And quite likely there were many more than just two selves involved over the above situation. Perhaps you were having thinking about your plans for the day, and carrying on a mental drama involving what was going to happen, and then you remembered an email you forgot to send and immediately started worrying about what that person will think, and how you have to rush to send off that email. In this case your body movements and your surroundings remained the same, but your thoughts, emotional feeling, emotional interests, and your sensations entirely change. The self that was enjoying thinking about your plans for the day is no longer real, and a different self who is worried about the email is now who you are. Neither of these selves are aware of one another, the experiences of one self are not real for the other self.

  Two different selves make incompatible bed-fellows. Take any two different plans you have, and try to let a self experience them together as real for it. For example, perhaps at one point in the day you are very concerned about a certain upcoming appointment, and at another point in the day you find yourself dreaming of a certain vacation you would like to take next month. Allow yourself to again dwell on each of these plans just as you did earlier. You just have to begin dwelling on one plan and right away you can be identified with it. With each plan a different self comes about that experiences the plan as being absolutely real to it. Now try to have both these selves present at the same time, and let yourself be as identified as you were with just one of them. At the same time that you are very concerned about your upcoming meeting, also dream of your vacation.

  You will find that this is very difficult if not quite impossible to do. These two different selves are incompatible with one another for several reasons: one, because an additional effort of attention is involved, and as a result different parts of the centres are being used that don’t allow you to be identified as you were before; two, each self exists in the centres in a different way, with different thoughts, emotional feelings and interests, and one self cannot experience all of these differences at the same time; and three, a self exists because you believe that is who you are, it is real to the exclusion of any other self being real, and you actually live in a third self as you try to experience these two selves at once. Find out what happens as you try to be identified with three or more selves at the same time.

  From the state of attention, observe what happens in the four centres of mind in order to notice what self is now present. At the same time, you need to be aware that whatever self you are now experiencing is one of the hundreds or even thousands of different selves that you believe are you at different times. You notice that you are thinking about your breakfast? That’s a self. And a very different self than when you are thinking about some event in your early school days. These two selves use the same centres, use the same parts of the centres, but with totally different thoughts, feelings, interests, movements, and responsiveness to your physiology and surroundings. That is the difference between one self and another self.

  End of exercise two.

  Exercise Three: observing the differences between selves.

  This exercise needs a quiet environment until you gain some proficiency in it. The observations you make when there are no external distractions around you can later on be made use of when you are in a busier environment. At the same time that you understand that you have not one but many different selves, you need to carefully observe each particular self as it comes around. Each particular self has its own unique life about it. Begin by establishing the state of attention, and from here watch the mind so that you are aware of whatever is going on. When you notice that things are going on in the centres, then inquire “who is it who is making me act like this, think like this, feel like this, move like this, react like this? Which self is coming alive right now?”

  You will find that each particular self has a certain scope to the thoughts it will think, to the emotional feelings and interests it will have, to the body movements it will make, to the responses it will make to your physiology and surroundings. What is thought, what is liked and disliked, what body movements are made, how the body is sensed, how your surroundings are paid attention to, each of these changes depending on which self you believe yourself to be. By looking at what is going on in the mind, you can see where everything meets up and results in a living breathing self. As soon as you see the centres doing their thing, look at the result of all four and ask yourself, “what self is this?” And you answer your own question: “oh, this is a lazy self” or “this is a worrying self” or “this is a destructive self” or “this is a scattered self”. Then begin to observe the self that believes it is experiencing this, and who wants you to think, feel, move, speak, and react in a certain way. Remain equanimous to the different selves you observe, do not react to them by liking or disliking them. You just want to observe what it feels like when a self begins coming alive.

  Always ensure that you are observing what is happening in the centres when you look for what self is there. You want to have a complete picture of how the self lives, and for this the self needs to be observed in a very precise way: by observing the identifications starting up in all four centres at once. As long as these particular thoughts, emotions, and actions are taking place, this self is so real that it is living. It lives because you believe it is you yourself, and the state of identification makes it so. One very good way to get a feel for how different selves live is by comparing one self to another. When you get a complete picture of how one self lives, by closely observing how a particular self lives in the centres, then you can notice what differences take place when another self lives in the centres.

  End of exercise three.

  Exercise Four: making a division between your work selves and your other selves.

  This is one of the most important exercises of this book. The exercises of this Aspect have shown you how to observe your different selves. Now you have to learn how to observe your work selves as different than your non-work selves. You need to divide yourself into all the selves who make work efforts and all the other selves who don’t make work efforts. Once you have made this division, then you can observe each self as it comes along, discern if it is a work self or not, and if it isn’t then to keep separate from it. All the exercises to come depend upon your ability to make a proper inner separation between your work selves and your other selves. This division is the next essential addition to the state of attention.

  Every time you observe a self coming around that has no interest in making efforts, you need to make an inner separation between you, who wants to make work efforts, and it, who doesn’t want to make work efforts. You then need to say in the right way: “this is not me – not ‘I’”. If you say this in the wrong way then it is not you saying this but it saying this, and then a wrong separation takes place and your work efforts stop. If you say this in the right way, then a right separation takes place and your efforts continue. The right way to say “this is not ‘I’” is to observe the self that is already in the mind and not touch it with your inner speech, your inner tongue.

  You can only say “this is not ‘I’” to a self that you are looking at in its totality. As soon as you notice thinking, or some body movement, or some emotional feeling or interest, then take a snapshot of all four centres at once. This snapshot should also contain the relationship between the state of attention and identification. Once you have this snapshot then you can make an inner separation between this self and a work self which the effort of separation brings about. The work self is outside of the other self, looking at it in its entirety, observing its tendrils in all the four centres, and not identifying with it. The work self, you, keeps separate from this other self, it, by remaining equanimous to it. You do not suppress it and you do not express it.

  This division needs to be made every time you notice a self beginning to emerge that has no interest in making efforts. Some selves you can separate from just by being vigilant towards them. Some selves require a little struggle, but are not so persistent that you easily fall prey to them. And some selves require an enormous struggle and will always end up winning unless the right division is made. A self gains a foothold every time you let one of its identifications go unchecked in one of the centres. As soon as you let one centre go unchecked, it begins to feed off it by thinking the thoughts it needs to live, or feeling the emotions it needs to live, or making the body movements it needs to live, or responding to your physiology and surroundings in the way it needs to live. If you let one centre go unchecked, then immediately a second centre will become a target of this self. Once two centres fall to it, then the third and fourth centres will next fall. And once all four centres are in the clutches of this self, then you are in total identification with it, and have no memory at all of ever having made efforts against identifying with it.

  Every time you make this division into you and it, you need to understand that it is one of the many selves that don’t know about the efforts you want to make. In this way you are aware that there are hundreds of selves you have to divide from, and not just this one.

  End of exercise four.

  Exercise Five: labelling persistent selves.

  From your efforts on the previous exercises of this Aspect, you will be familiar with certain selves that recur in your experience. Perhaps each morning when you wake up you start scratching your body. Or you hold your body in a certain position in the shower. Or you have the same emotional feeling, such as being annoyed, with a certain person whenever you meet them. Perhaps you have some moving centre habit you indulge in. What you now want to do is to compile a list of those selves that most persistently prevent you from making efforts. Each of these selves becomes a living breathing self when you identify with them. You want to observe each self and inquire, “well, what does it want to do with the centres, with state, with attention?” and “how does this self want to run my life?” and “look what sort of crap it wants to run the centres with! Look at what it wants to be identified with! Look at the sort of attention it wants to work with!”  It are these persistent selves that you specifically want to keep on watch for, and to divide yourself as soon as you notice them so you remain separate and not identified with them.

  You label a persistent self by giving it a name. Use your last name along with the characteristic of the self. Using your last name is only effective once your last name takes on a certain meaning to you. You need this name to represent everything that stands in your way. You need to understand this name as representative of all those selves that do not want you to change. These selves all want you to remain as you are, with your same collection of habits and fears and desires and everything that in your better moments you really and truly wish to change.

  Perhaps you often bite your fingernails, and forget about making efforts because you get so involved in this. Then you can name this self “Biting Your last name”. Perhaps there is a certain person whom you are irritated by every time you see them – “Irritated Your last name” – or whom you feel shy or self-conscious around – “Insecure Your last name” – or whom you have strong sexual feelings for whenever you think of them – “Lustful Your last name”. Perhaps you scratch your body in the same place – “Monkey Your last name” – or you indulge in imagining some future vacation you will take or status you will get – “Dreamy Your last name” – or you feel that your work efforts are not going very well – “Boo Boo Your last name”. You can give any name whatsoever that really captures the meaning of how it prevents you from making work efforts whenever it comes around.

  You can now begin to make a detailed list of each self that you have given a name to. If you have earmarked twenty persistent selves, then you now need to create twenty detailed lists. You want to outline on paper how the self lives within each of the centres, and over many different situations. To actually see all the relationships involved in any one self will be a long and sustained effort. This self will have to come around many times before you begin to make more detailed connections in how it needs the centres in order to live. Each self should have its own piece of paper. On the top of the paper write the name of the self. Then write down the four centres and the connections between the four centres, with enough space between each. Whenever you make an observation about this self, then you write it down in the first person perspective of that self. The list below looks at “Irritated Your last name” who only comes out in social situations.

  Irritated Your last name.

  Intellectual centre:

Thought: “why can’t those people stop talking so loudly?”

Thought: “can’t those people see that other people are here also?”

  Emotional centre:

Feeling: annoyance.

Feeling: frustration.

Interest: I dislike the other people who are talking.

Interest: I dislike the situation of having to sit near them.

Interest: I dislike having to feel annoyed.

  Moving centre:

Movement: I persistently itch the back of my neck.

Movement: I keep looking over at those people to look at their faces.

  Instinctive centre:

Breathing: My breathing feels more constricted.

Sensation: An itching is really strong on the back of my neck.

Sensation: I have a heavy feeling in the area of my abdomen.

Sound: These people are talking loudly.

  The connections between 2 centres:

  Intellectual and emotional centres: I dislike having to complain about the other people, to have those thoughts going on and on in my head.

  Emotional and instinctive centres: I feel especially irritated when I have that heavy feeling in my abdomen.

  Intellectual and instinctive centres: When I have that itching on the back of my neck, I think about how the other people are causing it to happen by way of their behaviour.

  Emotional and moving centres: When I begin really feeling that I hate these people, I look over at them to see what they look like.

  The connections between 3 centres:

  Intellectual, emotional and moving centres: I keep looking over at those people, feeling irritated, and thinking that they should see me looking at them and so stop talking so loudly.

  The connections between 4 centres:

  Intellectual, emotional, moving and instinctive centres: I have this pain in my stomach, and itching on my neck, and start becoming more irritated by the other people talking, and I begin to criticize them in my thoughts, and as this happens I begin to look over in their direction more often.

  Once you begin to make connections between all four centres, then you are forming a complete picture of this self. The next time you notice this self coming around, then right away you can recognize where it plans to go. You realize that if you identify with it then you will spend twenty minutes or an hour caught up in it, and that you won’t make a single work effort in that time. Once you recognize the scene, then you immediately make a division into you and it, and make an inner separation between them. If you are able to remain separate from it, then a whole range of possibilities now become available to you, such as those beginning in Aspect Five.

  End of exercise five.

  ASPECT FIVE: INTELLIGENCE.

  Work on this Aspect begins from the point where you have made a division of your experiences into your work selves and your other selves. These two different kinds of selves have their own state unique to them, the state of attention and the state of identification respectively, and each of these states has a property that is characteristic of it: intelligence for the state of attention and imagination for the state of identification. Once you learn how the selves you have now live in imagination, then you can learn how to bring about selves that live in intelligence.

  Exercise One: observing how a self lives in imagination.

  When a self lives in the state of identification, a very limited range of possibilities is available to it. The self who is worried about being late to a meeting has no room available to contemplate anything else. This self exists for the exclusive purpose of worrying about the meeting, and it disappears once this worry is over. This self lives because of the specific limitations it perpetuates: thinking about the meeting, worrying about being late, making rushed movements with the body, and so on. If there was another limitation added at this time, such as inner-separation, then the range of possibilities would entirely change because a new self would be there.

  When you live in the state of identification, then your life is nothing but the limitations of imagination that different selves believe they have to live with. It is through imagination that a self lives in such an exceptionally limited way. A self will think only one thought at a time, have only the narrowest awareness of its surroundings, be totally preoccupied with its interests, and all because this way of living is never taken into question. The self imagines it has to live this way without even recognizing that it imagines this. The self that makes you bite your fingernails is a self locked up in imagination. And every bit of imagination is a limitation that brings each and every thing down to a specific plateau and locks it in at that level. You bite your nails because you have to do it, the self you are identified with believes that is what your existence is for. You are tricked into believing that’s the value of your existence as long as you are identified with that self. You get caught up in your habits when they come around because the self you are identified with imagines that’s what it is supposed to do without even noticing it is imagining this.

  You want to observe how the persistent selves that you made a list for live in imagination. Each of these selves is limited by an invisible scope that it can take things, experience things. This invisible scope sets the limits that a self can experience what is before it, how far it can go. Each self is a prisoner of its own bits of imagination. “Irritated Your last name” is a self that will only think certain thoughts, only have certain feelings and interests, only take its physiology and surroundings a specific way; and if it were to experience thoughts, feelings, and interests differently than it wouldn’t be this self. “Irritated Your last name” imagines, without recognizing it is imagining, the limitations it must live within and as long as it is alive it absolutely sticks within these limitations. The power of imagination lies in how it tricks a self into not realizing that anything else is available to it.

  This exercise requires a refinement to your list of persistent selves. At the bottom of the list you need to add a new section as shown below.

  What I, Irritated Your last name, believe: I believe that I have the right to be irritated by other people. I am allowed to spend as much time as I like thinking about how other people are disrespectful and rude. I love the state of identification and will always live within it. I sometimes want to try and change, and be more relaxed and accepting of other people who I feel are encroaching on my space. But secretly I will never allow myself to change, because I love being irritated, even if it means being irritated with myself for being irritated. Once I can no longer hear these other people, then I disappear until next time.

  Once you know what “Irritated Your last name” believes, then the next time it comes around you can immediately know its full scope. You know that this self is not going to make any efforts at any time, because this is not part of its scope. Realizing that this self is not going to help you out, you can divide yourself into you and it and keep separate from it.

  End of exercise one.

  Exercise Two: bringing about a self that lives in intelligence.

  In the state of identification, there are countless different selves that each exist according to their own bit of imagination. A different relationship with self is required in the state of attention. You now want to begin experiencing selves that exist because you have a specific purpose that you need these selves for. Each specific purpose is an emotional interest of intentional liking. When you have an interest, and a self comes and lives that interest, then the result is a self that is living in intelligence. Now a self is only going to come and live the interest if it is interested in it. If you have a self come around that is not interested in the interest, then it certainly won’t begin living it. Every interest that you set up needs to have a reason why it should be worked on built into it. When a self comes around, and sees the reason why the interest is worth being worked on, then it is more likely to run with it.

  You want to make a concise list of interests that you are actually interested in, and are actually able to make efforts on when you remember them. You don’t want to have any interests that are beyond you, because you won’t experience a self that is capable of living them. Each interest you set up should result in living intelligence when the right self comes along. Perhaps the very first interest you set up is: to observe your respiration and the attention observing respiration at the same time. First you have to remember this interest, and then to make efforts to live this interest. It is in the act of making these efforts that a self comes about that actually lives what it is interested in. This self is your intelligence. Perhaps you have an interest in not reacting to one of your persistent selves. You notice this persistent self coming around, and immediately remember what interests you: to be equanimous towards this self and not identify with it by dividing yourself into you and it. If a work self notices your interest and then lives it, then this self is the intelligence that you have. If instead a non-work self is identified with, then you slip into its imagination and never come close to living intelligence.

  A self living in imagination has precise limitations to it that it never notices. A self living in intelligence actively chooses the limitations to what it will experience, and then lives in accordance to these limitations. Perhaps you set up the interest: to live in the state of attention. First of all you need to define for yourself what exactly this means. The state of attention changes as more Aspects are added to it. So the interest might be: to live in the state of attention up to the fourth Aspect. First of all you need to realistically determine if there exists a self that is capable of pulling this off. This self can only come about if many other work selves have done all the work leading up to such a self being possible. You cannot realistically expect a self can exist that is capable of living the interests of the first four Aspects all at once unless you have done all the homework you have needed to do.

  The self that lives in its limited imagination does not remember any of the other selves that are living in their limited imaginations. The opposite is the case for selves living in intelligence. While the selves living different imaginations are exclusionary, the selves living different intelligences are meant to be connected with one another. The self that lives in observing your respiration and attention at the same time, and the self that lives in being aware that all the parts of its experience are in the state of attention, are bits of intelligence that can be connected together. The result is a single self that experiences both these intelligences at once. If you have ten interests, and one by one a self comes that lives each interest, and each interest results in intelligence, then all ten intelligences can be connected together and result in a single intelligence being experienced by a single self.

  End of exercise two.

  Exercise Three: the place where you set up your interests.

  You need to set up your interests in a very precise way, so that you experience them at the exact moment that they are relevant to you. If you don’t remember what you are interested in in a continuous way, then they are of no use to you, and living intelligence will never become a possibility. In order to remember your interests in a continuous way, you need to have them with you at the same time as you experience whatever is happening. At the very moment of experiencing things happening in the four centres of mind, so do you need to experience your interests.

  Perhaps you are interested in: to keep something going, to keep making work efforts continuously. This interest is then established in all four centres. Once you establish this interest, then you place it at the exact place where experiences happen in each of the four centres. If you are vigilant, then as soon as you notice a thought coming, a different interest forming, a movement beginning, a sound or sensation happening, so do you remember your interest and this keeps the self interested in working going.

  Perhaps your interest is: to observe my flow of thought and to not identify with it. Although thinking is an intellectual centre activity, you still place the interest in all four centres. If you are vigilant, then as you experience a smell, sense your stomach gurgle, notice an emotional feeling, or realize a mental picture is forming, so do you remember what you are interested in and this self can keep working. 

  The intelligences in section two of this book each have a set of interests that a self has to be aware of in order for the intelligence to come to life. Five or ten interests need to be remembered at the same time, and each interest is most effective when it resides in all four centres at once. Begin to make efforts at living with two, three, or more interests at the same time.

  End of exercise three.

  Exercise Four: reforming a self that lives in imagination.

  There are three things that can happen each time you notice a self that has no interest in making work efforts. First, you recognize this is a self that lives in the limitations of its imagination, but forget to divide yourself and end up becoming identified with it. Second, you notice this self and divide yourself correctly, and in keeping separate from it this self recedes from whence it came. Third, you notice this self and divide yourself correctly, but while this self is still in your sight you subvert and attempt to reform it. It is this third effort that you now want to become more familiar with.

  As you are now, you may have a few selves who are interested in making work efforts, while the vast majority of the rest of them have no interest whatsoever. Yet you need to have more than just a few selves being interested in making efforts, otherwise you will spend most of your time in the other selves who don’t know about doing such a thing. You need to make a precise effort with each self that you observe that is unaware of making efforts. This effort consists in subverting one or two of its limitations, so that when the self comes around these subverted limitations do as well.

  Perhaps you choose to subvert “Irritated Your last name”. You have made a detailed list of how this self lives in the centres, and what it imagines it has to do. Now you choose a specific limitation and replace it with another. Instead of allowing “Irritated Your last name” to imagine that it can go about thinking the thought, “why can’t those people stop talking so loudly?”, you now have “Irritated Your last name” imagine it can think the thought, “it’s so nice to see people who are enjoying themselves”. The next time “Irritated Your last name” comes around, and you remember your new interest, then you need to have a self come about that lives the interest so that you experience the situation with intelligence.

  End of exercise four.

  ASPECT SIX: WILL.

  Once you have set up your interests, and a self is aware of them, then this self needs to actually express the intelligence. It is not enough for this self to live, it also has to live a life every part of which is an expression of intelligence. The first five Aspects discuss what to work on (the exercises; the interests you set up) and why you should work on them (to make changes to yourself so that other possibilities are available). In this Aspect you need to learn how to make efforts once the other five Aspects are already in place. This means that exercising will is only possible from the state of attention as it stands in its transformations up through Aspect Five. A self that is aware of its interests, is consciously separated from all the other selves not aware of its interests, looks out over the four centres of mind, is aware it is above the state of identification, and is aware of where its attention is – it is this self who is going to make the effort of exercising will.

  Exercise One: exercising will through dividing your work self from “Your last name”.

  An intelligence comes to life when a self lives the set of interests that correspond to that intelligence. The self that is aware of these interests needs to use all the parts of its experience to make these interests as real as the self is. Each of the interests is put at their relevant points where experiences happen, so that whatever happens the entire set of interests are all there. The self that is interested in these interests is but one of the hundreds upon hundreds of selves that can be real to you. Even as this self is aware of itself as a living breathing self, there continue to be other selves that also want to live through your being identified with them. The self that is looking after your interests can only survive by constantly keeping itself separate from all the other selves. These other selves are all “Your last name”, which means that they live in the state of identification, and sometimes they will be the persistent selves you have given a more specialized name to.

  You will recall that a self feels real to you when it is within all four centres. For this self to “exercise will”, it has to make use of these four centres. At the same time that you bring your interests into all four centres, “Your last name” will keep bringing its myriad of interests into them as well. As you strive to move your body in a certain way, some other self will have you move it another way. As you attempt to think a certain kind of thought, a different self will instead begin thinking its kind of thought. As you endeavour to have a certain emotional feeling, and to have certain likes and dislikes, another self will feel a different feeling, and have its own interests. As you try to experience your physiology and surroundings a certain way, some other self will want to experience them quite differently. For this self to exercise will, it has to keep the centres working with its interests while at the same time not identifying with the interests of “Your last name”. Your work self has to be vigilant enough to remember all at once who it is, what it wants, why it wants this, and how to have what it wants.

  Perhaps you are interested in: to remain in the state of attention as of Aspect Two. Immediately you – which means this self – have to divide yourself into the self that is interested in doing this and every other self that isn’t. The selves that aren’t interested will all the time attempt to make you identify with their interests by making you forget about the self who is presently living its interests. One half of your responsibility at this point, as the self alive to its interests, is to keep a very sharp eye on all the other selves so that you don’t lose yourself to them. The other half of your responsibility is to make every part of every centre run with the life of the intelligence. You want to actively think, actively feel, actively have interests, actively move the body, actively experience the physiology and your surroundings a certain way. Each of the intelligences of section two will discuss the details of how to do this with their interests.

  End of exercise one.

  Exercise Two: two alternative means of exercising will over “Your last name”.

  In exercise one you exercised will by setting up your interests at the point where experiences happen, separating yourself from the different selves of “Your last name” as they came around, and actively using the centres to express the life of the intelligence. This exercise provides two alternative ways to exercise will. Whenever you are established in a self living a set of interests, you will keep coming against selves that are not interested in making such efforts. Each of these selves has its own self-will, its own set of interests that are different than yours. When a self comes around that is not interested in making efforts, and you notice this, then keep this other self clearly in front of you. Observe the self-will it has in all four centres at once, how it wants you to be interested in certain thoughts, emotions, movements, relationships with the instinctive centre.

  Perhaps it is a self that wants to indulge in some moving centre habit. In this case its self-will is interested in making certain body movements, and the resounding effects upon the other centres. Once you have a grasp of its self-will, you need to exercise your will upon its will. With some selves you can declare their interests are of no interest to you, and their self-will is not strong enough to resist you. With these selves you can “steal” the emotional element of its interest and put it towards strengthening the emotional element of the interests you are making efforts on. With other selves whose self-will is very strong this approach won’t work. Not being able to steal its self-will, you need to make this self “use its self-will against itself”. Here you take all its self-will and put it into some absurd activity, such as making the body dance around vigorously as though you were possessed. You actually feel the self helplessly thrown about in the dance, all of its self-will being expended on this. Then you can see how much self-will it has afterwards.

  End of exercise two.

  Exercise Three: strengthening will through establishing a “permanent place”. [put into The Search on May 22, 2007 in “chapter twelve”]

  In this exercise you try to do something with your work self in order to see how “Your last name” – the state of identification – prevents you from doing it fully and wholly. As you work on experiencing in all your parts the self that wants to live your set of interests, so will you keep coming up against “Your last name” who isn’t interested in living these interests at all. You will also find that time and time again “Your last name” wins, because its myriad of selves is more real to you then the selves that will live your chosen interests. The work selves you experience are consistently helpless before these other selves who have had your entire lifetime to achieve their current position. To realize your helplessness before “Your last name”, and to realistically understand what it means to exercise will, is the purpose of this exercise.

  Begin by placing on the floor next to your bed, or next to the desk you work at, a piece of cloth. This will become your “permanent place”. Put your feet on the cloth as you sit with a straight back and hands on your thighs. In this position make the efforts needed to bring about a self interested in the set of interests you have chosen to work on. Now plan what to do with this self once it is here: wash a dish, walk to the park and back, make your bed, meditate for twenty minutes, etc. Vividly visualize yourself standing up, going and doing the activity, and then returning and sitting in the exact same place and position as before. Vividly visualize the sorts of thoughts you will have, the feelings and interests, the movements, your physiology and surroundings. Vividly visualize how all the while you are going to watch for “Your last name”, to observe how any of its selves prevent you from completing the activity as you visualized it. When you return and sit down in the same place and position as before, again connect with the self who did the visualization.

  Reflect on what happened. Look at how “Your last name” intervened or even completed the activity that your work self began. Your work self is only able to exercise will to the degree that you recognize you are actually present in what is happening. It often isn’t possible for your work self to persist throughout the length of the activity because of your becoming identified with some other self. Each time you undertake this exercise, you want to explicitly study and learn about “Your last name”, because it is precisely this that is going to prevent your work. Every time your attitude should be one of curiosity: “let’s see what’s going to come of the exercise this time.” You begin the exercise visualizing having completed it with your work self, but almost always finish the exercise understanding your helplessness before “Your last name”.

  Getting into the habit of using your “permanent place” can become one of the most effective tools you have. You put yourself under a certain law by using this place, it acts as a force on you and it can have a magical effect. Once you get a feel for beginning from this place and then returning to it, all the while remembering that you are under its law, then you can become more ambitious: to always begin and end your day from this same place. Before you start your day, you sit at your permanent place and choose the intelligence you want to work on that day. You can return to this place as often as possible over the day, and connect with your set of interests, to see how things have gone since you were last here, to recharge and begin again. If you are routinely in a few predictable places – your house, your job – you can make a permanent place in each of these if it is appropriate.

  End of exercise three.

  ASPECT SEVEN: NEUROLOGY.

  This Aspect provides a different vantage point with which to begin work on yourself. In order to bring life to the experiences discussed in the exercises of this book, you are actually dependent upon your neurology. By being more aware of how your neurology works, you can then introduce an additional measure into your efforts. You may find it useful to search for information on the Internet about neurology.

  Exercise One: observing how your neurology works.

  Whatever you experience can be looked upon as a biological event, as an interaction between chemical substances and electrical forces. In this Aspect, these interactions will  be looked at on a neurological level. There are one hundred billion neurons in the brain, and it is through their activities that your experiences happen. To be aware of your body, your thoughts, your emotions, your attention, your environment, to have any kind of experience at all, a certain activation of neurons must take place.

  Neurons transmit information by releasing chemicals between one another, and these chemicals cause electrical activities that make the information move in a certain way. These biochemical-electrical interactions happen without any direction on your part. You might choose to think about something, but you don’t choose which neurons are going to be involved in making those thoughts happen. Neurons work a certain way because of the chemical and electrical reactions involved in them. While you would need a laboratory to directly observe these reactions, it is possible to observe the products of these reactions. A thought you have, an emotion you feel, a movement you make, a sight you see, a sound you hear, a sensation you sense, a smell you smell, a taste you taste; all of these are the products of neuron activity. Whatever you experience is mediated through the reactive interactions of neuron activity.

  Regardless of how much intention you put into something, the outcome is ultimately a product of reactive interactions at the biological level. While the neurons involved change depending on what it is you are doing, the fact that they are operating by way of reaction does not. Compare the following two situations. In one situation, you are lying in your bed at night, and keep tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable. In a second situation, you are studying very seriously for an upcoming exam or meeting. In the first situation you are constantly reacting to the body sensations, and in the second situation you are keeping focussed on studying. While these two situations appear to be totally different, both experiences are the result of the reactive interactions of neurons. All of your experiences are a result of reaction at the biological level.

  From the efforts you have made so far, you have likely noticed a few moods, emotions, thoughts, behaviours, patterns of life, habitual experiences, that keep recurring. Each time a habitual experience recurs, particular neuron connections are run through with the result of something like an electrical circuit forming. This circuit, which will be referred to as a neuron patch, is a closed path that necessitates certain reactive interactions take place. These biological reactions in turn perpetuate the products that make up the habitual experience. The result of this is that you think, feel, move, and sense in a particular way, in accordance with the neuron patch that is activated, and as a result further strengthen the neurological reactions that produce such a way of experiencing things.

  A neuron patch exclusively supports only its kind of experiences, and it can dramatically limit your ability to live in any way except within the products that arise from its circuit. Its neurons necessitate that a very limited area of the brain is activated. From this limited area, a limited number of options are available to you because only so much is possible from these reactive interactions. The result of this is that what you experience is organized in a very specific way, and so any different way of experiencing the moment is not possible. You can realize this when you are in the clutches of your habit: that there does not seem to be any alternative but to continue on as you are.

  Memories, especially distinct ones, provide a very useful way to look at how a neuron patch works. When you lose yourself inside a memory, the different parts of experience that were there can take place again. You might have the same mental pictures, thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and body movements as you did before. The exact same self might even be there again. Here you are living within an already established neuron patch, and perpetuating the experiences that have been stored within it. As you get caught up in this memory, you are actually supporting this neuron patch to increase its reactive interactions and the resulting products of these interactions.

  Pick one habitual experience of yours that you notice frequently recurs, and try to look at it from a neurological perspective. Try to visualize how this particular experience happens because of a corresponding neuron patch being activated. Actually see the neuron patch within your brain, and how what you experience is determined by its reactions.

  Now begin to visualize the relationship between the four centres of mind and the neuron patch. Each centre is feeding this neuron patch, and they in turn are limited by what they have put into it. You can look at the activities of the centres as operating in layers: the products of certain reactive interactions are most obviously predominating, perhaps an emotional interest and particular thoughts, while further in the background sensations and mental pictures assist in colouring the overall experience. Different centres will become more prominent as their products move from the background to the foreground.

  End of exercise one.

  Exercise Two: the fragmentation of neurology.

  You may have grown up believing that all you think, feel, say, and do comes from something you call ‘myself’, and that this self has changed over the years with the final result of the self who is reading this now. Such a belief makes no sense at the neurological level. Whatever you experience, including your sense of self, is a product of whatever neurons are presently being activated. When an external or internal stimulus is registered, specific neurons are activated and your experience proceeds along these cortical connections. While an experience may appear to come from one unchanging source, and so appear to have some kind of permanence, different areas of the brain are being moved in and different networks of neurons are being utilized. What you experience, and who you believe experiences it, does not have a permanent home, a group of neurons that is the “control centre”.

  Your neurology is characterized by fragmentation. Your experiences are the products of biochemical-electrical activities whose interactions are constantly changing. A memory, a train of thought, an emotional interest, none of these can remain stable and unchanging. Each time you experience a memory or an emotional interest it is worded somewhat differently, pictured differently, felt about differently, concluded differently, is persisted in for a shorter or longer span of time, and so on. In the same way, whenever you reflect upon who you think you are as of right now, who your self is, you keep coming upon different thoughts and feelings about it. There can be no fixed continuity in your experiences because different neuron patches, in varying parts of the brain, will arise depending on the corresponding circumstances. This fragmentation that takes place at the neurological level results in your being unable to remember the entirety of an experience at once. When you reflect upon what you did yesterday, or on a trip you will take next week, you always only experience individual scenes, isolated details, as opposed to experiencing all the scenes and details at once. Your neurology is not designed in such a way that you can experience all the parts of a neuron patch at once.

  As a result of some habitual experience recurring time and again, more than one neuron patch based around it may be formed. With years of repeating a particular habit, where different thoughts, feelings, and movements all get involved, then multiple independent neuron patches can become established. However, the contents of one neuron patch are not aware of the contents of the others. When you are completely involved in a particular habit of yours, you do not remember all the times that you swore to not indulge in it. Here one neuron patch contains all your experiences of indulging in the habit, and a different neuron patch contains all your experiences of trying to escape it. When neuron patches begin to express their contents on a daily basis, their products become a very visible part of your life. Becoming locked up in certain memories, emotions, thoughts, actions, habits and tendencies, a certain self, can become so habitual that the neuron patch actually acquires its own very distinct volition.

  Making a choice is often thought of as being a straightforward process: your self weighs the options and chooses what to do. But this conception of things needs to be weighed against how your biology works. With each different movement, thought, or emotion, different neurons are activated; and even different neuron patches may be moved through. Any number of different behaviours, associations of thought, or feelings and moods can result, and the very experience you are having can entirely change, all depending on what reactions are taking place. With such a view of how things are, where do choices get made? As it stands, there is clearly no one self, and no one neuron patch, that is all the time making choices. When a choice is made, a certain reaction of neurons is what makes the choice. For example, you are trying to choose whether to eat something or not. If a neuron patch is activated that contains a self that is interested in eating, then this will result in the choice to eat. The activation of a different neuron patch will lead to the choice not to eat. In both cases you end up following through with the ‘choice’ that the reactions ‘made’, and which you might account to your self having chosen to do so. In observing how the choices you make are the result of the reactive interactions of neuron patches, you can realize the extent to which neurology plays its role in whatever you do.

  End of exercise two.

  Exercise Three: beginning to work on your neurology.

  Your five body senses (seeing, hearing, sensing, smelling, tasting), thoughts, emotions, body movements, and sense of self are what you experience. Your neurology is how you experience. What you experience is limited by the neurology which makes the experience possible. You cannot alter the neurology directly, as it operates at too inaccessible a level: at the level of reactive interactions between neurons. But you can alter how you respond to what you experience, and this in turn can alter the neurology.

  Whenever neuron activity happens, biochemical-electrical interactions take place. While the neurons are impartial to the products of their reactions, the reactions themselves are a source of pleasure. There is a liking towards these reactions at a primordial emotional level, regardless of what they are, and so a desire for them to continue. This neurological interest would be a good thing if the thoughts, emotions, and movements you experienced were all pleasurable to you, and were useful for your work efforts. Yet you will find that you dwell upon negative and unpleasant thoughts, emotions, and movements even though they might make you feel miserable and depressed. This is because your neurology is interested in the pleasure that comes from neurons releasing chemicals and electricity, quite independent of whatever thoughts, emotions, or movements are there.

  While the cortex experiences the reactive interactions of neurons as pleasurable, the neurons are neutral towards the experiences produced. You need to bring the natural neutrality of the neurons towards their products into how you experience those same products. This natural neutrality can also be known as equanimity. When you are equanimous towards the products of the neurons, this in turn affects the very neurons involved. This is the point where you can begin affecting your neurology. For this a very specific kind of effort is required: to have your attention steeped in equanimity while you investigate the relationship between experience and neurology. When you have this kind of attention, then you will be able to notice what experiences are happening, and to bring equanimity into them. No matter how commonplace or out of the ordinary, agreeable or disagreeable, the particular experience is, you bring this equanimity and observe the experience without trying to change it.

  How you live is a constant expression of the products of reactive interactions. When you observe the products of your neurology over a period of weeks, you will infallibly notice thoughts, emotions, actions, and selves that keep repeating in your daily life. Particular habitual experiences may already have several neuron patches, and each time you dwell in these habits their neurology is further developed and strengthened. You end up propagating these neurons that determine who you can be and how you can live. When you do not identify with or react to certain of your experiences, when you are equanimous to them, you are actually working on not allowing certain biochemical-electrical reactions to proceed. In doing this, the neuron activity initiated by those reactive interactions is affected because those connections are not given the necessary support to follow through on expressing their circuitry. The result of this is that equanimity becomes an intrinsic part of the expression of these neurons, and when the experience next happens you find there is a natural equanimity towards it.

  End of exercise three.

  Exercise Four: being equanimous towards reactive impulses.

  Be on watch for a particular habitual experience you tend to indulge in. Watch for what causes this habit to begin unfolding. You want to determine the initial reactionsthat result in the corresponding reactive interactions. These initial reactions will be termed reactive impulses. A thought, mental picture, emotional feeling or interest, sensation, sound, sight, taste, smell, or movement, are all reactive impulses. When you notice that the habitual experience is beginning, carefully look for the initial reactive impulses that indicate that certain reactive interactions have started.

  Whenever a reactive impulse happens and goes unchecked, then there is nothing to stop the corresponding reactive interactions from taking place. These reactive interactions will continuously produce experiences that support further reactive interactions taking place. This process, if it goes unchecked, can continue for anywhere from a few minutes up to a few hours. Until a different neuron patch is moved into, and the habit is forgotten about, your life is taken up by the clutches of this habitual experience. Yet you can make efforts to check this process. Before you go to bed at night, plan to be on watch for the particular habitual experience the entire day tomorrow. At the same time that you are on the watch for it, you also want to be equanimous towards it when it happens. Let’s say you are at the breakfast table when you notice a reactive impulse. In the moment after the reactive impulse occurs, and before an experience takes place that will support the habit, you bring in your aim: to not react to this habit by being equanimous towards it. You notice the reactive impulse the moment it happens, and immediately make an effort to not become identified with it.

  By remaining vigilant and working in this way for the entire day, these neuron patches are being neurologically altered. The habit may repeatedly attempt to express itself, and be persistent about doing so, but all the while you know that the neurons supporting it are being altered because of your equanimity. This neuron patch is currently a full grown tree, but in being persistent with not reacting to their products, the reactive interactions themselves begin to shut down. No new seeds are planted, the seeds already there are not allowed to grow, and the tree begins to change (with some, their death means they can be reborn, a new purpose is made use of it). When you notice a reactive impulse, and immediately do not react to it, then the corresponding reactive interactions will either cease or a further effort will be required. And as a result of this further effort, the reactive interactions will either stop or will again require another effort. At times you may find it useful to have an amused or slightly fascinated attitude, “oh! Look at what reactions are happening now; how interesting! It is good that this neuron patch I have lived in so many times is now happening, because by my being equanimous to it I am changing its very circuitry.”

  By being persistent in not reacting to particular experiences, an entire neuron patch – or parts of it – can be taken out of service. Although these neurons remain in the brain, their reactive interactions actually undergo a transformation. This means that when you next have this experience, you actually have a different relationship with it. The point is not to stop having a certain experience, but to instil equanimity within the responsible neurons. By not reacting to a reactive impulse, the corresponding neurons begin getting written over with equanimity. The total de-activation or complete alteration of the neuron patch is probably not going to happen immediately. Rather, when the habit begins next time, you might find that you can experience its products differently. These reactive interactions instilled as a result of all those times you lived in the throes of the habit are not going to just disappear from your biology. Your memories will still be accessible by you, yet you experience them differently. When you choose to reminisce upon particular memories that you have written over with equanimity, their contents will not be a source of unhappiness because you now look at them with equanimity.

  With how much speed and how much determination do you not react to the reactive impulses? If you initially react for five minutes, and only then begin to make efforts to not react, then you will have strengthened the neuron patch by allowing new reactive interactions to take place. If you make the effort to be equanimous immediately, and keep making efforts as long as necessary, then this has a definite effect on the neuron patch. A tremendous purifying effect can take place, so that when the reactive impulses next happen you have even more strength to not react to them. Even if after five minutes of reacting you begin to not react, this can still affect the habit pattern, and it can also help you to not react sooner the next time around. Your speed of noticing a reactive impulse and not reacting to it increases once you start being attentive to reactive impulses on a regular basis, and do not react to them.

  You will sometimes find that certain reactive impulses are incredibly persistent. Even if you do not react to these experiences time and again, the same habit still insistently shows up. Although you may have not reacted fifty times, and believe that you have come to terms with the experience in such a way that you need never have to deal with it again, yet once more you find that you must deal with it. The reason this habit is so persistent is because in your past you have indulged in it so often, so many times, that it has become stored in countless different neuron patches throughout the brain. However, over the fifty times you did not react, you may have only accessed twenty neuron patches, whereas this habit is stored in forty of them. 

  Certain neuron patches arise only once you are having specific thoughts or emotions, or making certain body movements, or only when specific body senses are happening. It is only when these experiences are happening that these other neuron patches can be gotten at. Certain neuron patches can only be gotten at once other neuron patches are activated, and because of their neuronal proximity another neuron patch is come across. As some habitual experiences are stored in many neuron patches, and some neuron patches require a very specific event that will act as an approach to them, these habits will keep recurring for quite a while after you first begin not reacting to them.

  When you first begin to not react to a habitual experience you have dwelt in quite often, you might only be cutting back the leaves and branches of it. Sometimes a very long time is required to begin affecting the roots of this habit. These roots may be in many different neuron patches, including the initial neuron patches that resulted in the habit becoming more wide spread. By diligently working with every habitual experience as it comes up, the deep-rooted reactive interactions begin to be altered. Those reactive interactions responsible for the most tumultuous branches involved may take months or years before you have the chance to not react to them. The important thing is to not react each and every time a reactive impulse is come across that you have chosen to be equanimous towards.

  Realizing that every habit arises due to a reactive interaction, and observing which reactive impulses lead to which experiences happening, are the first efforts you need to make. Then you can figure out what experiences you no longer want to have your neurology produce. In so many words, what you need to do is take a vow to not react – to be equanimous – each and every time those specific reactive impulses arise. When a habit does arise that ends up taking up the entirety of your attention, don’t feel depressed or defeated. Rather, remember that reactive impulses are taking place, and that if you do not react then you are actually changing the neurology involved in them. Feel grateful that you have an opportunity to keep your attentiveness steadfast on your wish to take your life in a new direction. Laughing to yourself, you think “oh, this habit again!?” and make a point of not reacting, thus changing the reactive interactions involved and becoming one step closer to being free of their power over you. When you do not react to a particular habit for a considerable period of time, and then notice one of its reactive impulses arising, you do not even have to think to yourself “this is a habit I do not want to live in, and I better not react to it”, for you observe it arising as a potential about to manifest and in that very instant do not give this potential any impetus to continue. You are strong enough to not succumb to that habit.

  At those times when you experience thoughts, emotions, or behaviours in such a way that you are unable to distance yourself from the drama they are staging for you, try and make a point of observing things from a neurological perspective. Take each individual part of the experience you are having – a thought, a gesture, an emotion – as a set of reactive interactions that are continually arising and passing. By breaking the experience down in this way, you realize that you are being equanimous towards the brain’s biological processes. If the experience persists for some time, the appropriate thing to think is: “oh, now this neuron patch is being activated for a period of time”. Knowing that your particular experience is due to this neuron patch, you can imaginatively isolate in which area of the brain it is. You can now feel as if you are within the neurons themselves, thus being able to stop their reactive interactions or to allow their continuation. Rather than struggling to stop thoughts, stop an emotion, or break a habit, you carefully oversee the very neurons responsible for such experiences. Instead of concerning yourself with which particular thoughts, emotions, or behaviours are present, you act with equanimity from within the neurons involved.

  End of exercise four.

  Exercise Five: bringing something additional into what you experience.

  When you are totally immersed in your life, then you fail to take the time to experience things in a vivid way. This means you don’t intentionally pause to look at colours, to listen to sounds, to taste your food, to think thoughts, to have emotional feelings and interests, to make body movements. When you don’t make an effort to experience things in a new way, then there is no change in the biochemical-electrical processes, and no change in your neurological pattern. This neurological pattern ensures that your experiences are always taken in in a similar way, and that nothing additional comes into them. Yet bringing something additional into the experiences you have is an integral part of all the efforts you are making. With each experience that you bring “something additional” into, a new kind of neurology is set up. To be distinctly aware of attention, of state, of the centres of mind, of self, of intelligence, of will, and of all the parts of each of these, is to build up a new kind of neurology. When neurons have something additional built into them, then you are making your biology work for you.

  You need to be consistent in building new neuron patches, while at the same time being consistent in not becoming subject to those neuron patches that you have chosen to no longer react to. Whatever thought, emotion, body sense, or body movement you notice happening, explicitly investigate what effect it has on your project. If it is against your work, then you don’t react to it with equanimity realizing “this is a reactive impulse that will not support my work”, while at the same time becoming attentive to the Aspects you are working on. Make your efforts proceed along a black and white scale, so that either you are not trying at all or you are working to the best of your abilities. When you are not trying ask yourself, “who exactly do I think I am right now? And who was I those other times when I was working with so much determination?”. If you are really determined to live in a new way, then you have to find a way to move out of your disinterested attitude and go about making efforts as though your life depended on it.

  You are working to change the connections involved in the neurology from which efforts are made, to build new neuron patches in your brain that intentionally establish the self who perceives in line with an intelligence. You do not want this new way of living to come from the neuron patches you are used to living with, for then the reactive impulses that support your usual habits will keep making you live as you always have. There will be no chance for any serious change to occur at the neuronal level whereby you experience things differently. You will have to find ways to begin working at that point where the neurological connections are new enough that you feel distinctly different about yourself. In order to reach this point, you will need to play with the various ways in which you experience things. Undertake different activities that make you feel your body differently, that make you feel emotional with a new sort of thought, and that makes you interact with your body in an entirely new way. When you are persistent in your work, you will find that the neuron patches whose activation makes you think, feel, and behave in ways that you are used to begin to atrophy in the field of your experience. And at the same time, neuron patches whose activation makes you think, feel, and behave in ways that support your new lifestyle are more noticeably taking place.

  Having chosen the aims you want to work with, be attentive towards them as often as possible. The only way to really establish these new neuron connections is to have your attention repeatedly reflect on them to the point where you are creatively living through them. Continuously reflecting on the aims that you want yourself to live with; configuring the relevant Aspects while the aims are established; creatively expressing in the varying domains of your experience the resulting insights and understandings that are alive to you; these are three tasks that outline the work set out for you. Whenever an intelligence is established within your attention, work on broadening it so that multiple ideas and experiences have the opportunity to connect together. Spend an hour at a time inclining your attention towards establishing that intelligence which makes you feel with your whole being: “this is the sort of life I want to live with for the rest of my life”.

  Because this moment conditions the next moment to continue the stream of events it gave rise to, the next moment will arise supporting the continuation of how you are at this moment. When you work on establishing an intelligence in your attentiveness, in the next moment this can again be present whereby its neuron patches will be strengthened, and in the next moment again this can arise and these neuron connections can be further strengthened. As you continue to work on this particular intelligence with all your worth, you will find that neuron activities that make you live as you are used to arise less often, and neurons that support your tailor-designed particularities of living arise more often.

  End of exercise five.

  Exercise Six: developing a particular intelligence.

  There are many different intelligences that you can work on. Once you have chosen an intelligence to make efforts upon, then it needs to become a one point of interest for you. At the neurological level, this one interest has to take root within the fragmentation of neuron activity. Whatever initial experiences you have when working on the intelligence must be set aside, and then fresh efforts begun. If you search for your initial motivations in order to keep making efforts, then you are searching for the neuron patch they are stored in. Finding this neuron patch, however, would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Once you are away from it for a while you will likely not find it again. You have to work with the neurology, in realizing that you have to start from the beginning for what may be years on end. One neuron patch is not going to make a difference, but a hundred or a thousand will. You need to reflect upon the intelligence thousands upon thousands of times, over many different situations, in order for your neurology to begin supporting it. Each of these neuron patches will now store genuine experiences you had while living with the intelligence. When you need motivation to begin working, you can now search for any of the hundreds of neuron patches that correspond with living the intelligence. These neuron patches will begin to connect together so that the intelligence becomes easier to locate, to the point where just by reflecting on the intelligence it begins to be there.

  Your brain has tens of thousands of neuron patches that store tendencies having nothing to do with the intelligence you want to have. Clearly, many years of constant effort are going to be needed in order for a big change to happen. However, your first experience of living with an intelligence, with living as an entirely new human being, with an entirely new way of approaching life; this very first experience is leading you into a new stream of existence. There are now tens of thousands of neuron patches knowing nothing of this intelligence, and this one neuron patch that does. The establishment of your entire life upon a completely new basis will no doubt require not only constant efforts at building new neuron patches while not supporting the myriad of old neuron patches, but an entire lifetime in which to do it.

  The intelligence you are working on needs to be made fresh to you repeatedly over the day. By setting your wrist watch to go off at different times, you are reminded to pause for a moment, and look at what the situation means from the intelligence’s perspective. A critical time to remember and contemplate the intelligence is before you lie down to go to sleep. By making an effort to feel out all the connections involved in the intelligence, you allow your neurology to continue to work on it even as you fall asleep. And then when you wake up, you want to remember the intelligence and begin contemplating it as soon as possible. These routine efforts you make each day help keep the intelligence fresh for you, and helps it become a more natural part of your life.

  You are working to establish your intelligence in whatever you experience. You do not want to have this become a mechanical act. Rather, it is imperative that you are creative in working on it. This means you need to recognize when an effort you are making is not succeeding at the neurological level, and to then approach the intelligence in an entirely different way. As you will discover, gaining complete mastery over your neurology is not the easiest task. How successful you are really comes down to how interested you are in having the intelligence, because when you are really fascinated in having it then you make the choices that make it happen. Your entire life you have made choices with whichever neuron patches happened to be present, and in this way you were rarely in a position to make choices that helped you to live differently. Now you will find that developing an intelligence requires a change in how you go about making choices. You need to take the intelligence into consideration before you act. Your own experience will show you what approaches work in consistently establishing the intelligence and allow it to grow in its scope.

  When you work at it, you will find that you forget your intelligence so often and instead live in ways completely unrelated to it. To counter this you need to establish the intelligence as permanent as possible in your attentiveness, and from its vantage point to not identify with anything that is unrelated to it. From within the intelligence, you observe other neuron patches coming and going, and to its permanence everything in relation to it is impermanent. As this state of experience watches unrelated activities arise and pass, the intelligence’s neurological connections become stronger, and their products more lucid and empowering.

  End of exercise six.

  Exercise Seven: substance.

  As you work on a chosen intelligence, neuron patches are formed that store your experiences. If you were only reading and contemplating ideas, such neuron patches could not have formed. It is through your efforts upon living an intelligence that substance is made. Substance is the reactive interactions that produce intelligence. By living an intelligence, neuron patches are created that can then give new results. These neuron patches store your experiences with intelligence, and when they are again activated those experiences are brought back into play. Substance causes reactive impulses that offer you the chance to begin working, and these reactive impulses may not be just a single thought or emotion but a full experience that encompasses all four centres of mind.

  You may find that an intelligence becomes very alive for you when you reflect on it. In this case substance assists you in experiencing the intelligence. When you lived with the intelligence, you did so attentively, knowing it was how you wanted to live; so when the reactive impulses come, they bring with them the same quality of vigilance and determination as before.

  You will sometimes find that the intelligence just shows up, without any effort on your part. In moments when you are preoccupied with something else, and substance is activated, the intelligence will all of a sudden just be there. In this case, a neuron patch is activated due to unseen causes, and its reactive impulses remind you to make efforts by giving you an experience to start working with. At various moments throughout the day, you will suddenly have the opportunity to make use of what substance gives you, to  express the intelligence that is now present in this completely effortless manner.

  Substance has the advantage of making connections at the neurological level that you may have never made at the psychological level. All of a sudden you will see a connection you never saw before that helps you in your work and in how you live the intelligence. Substance synthesizes the experiences that you have at different times, and which otherwise would have remained apart. An additional advantage concerning substance is how several independent neuron patches can be connected together. When neuron patches storing different experiences of lived intelligence arise with one another, you experience an expanded state of intelligence. This expanded state is a place of insight, of learning what you need to work at next, where multiple ideas are connected in such a way that they all arise together. Substance results in an organization at the psychological level that allows a new dimension to the experiences you can have.

  It will be very helpful if you are consistent in remembering the experiences you have had when living with an intelligence. This allows separate neuron patches to get connected up, to bring a new totalizing whole to the intelligence which would otherwise remain fragmented in each of them. This also allows for a self that can experience it all. At those times when you are finding it difficult to work, you can then turn towards previous experiences you have had to help support your making efforts. You invoke substance, knowing you have a retinue of experiences that have the capability of changing the centres. You may also find that working on a sequence of experiences, such as those the Ten Aspects presents, helps in forming substance. You want to work with a clearly formulated sequence, one where you can be intimately involved in each step.

  To reach the point where from the moment you wake in the morning already intelligence is there, for neuron patches whose purpose is to ensure your attention proceeds a certain way to be activated, and for such reactive impulses to continue throughout the day, is the point where substance is truly having a magical effect.

  End of exercise seven.

  ASPECT EIGHT: WORLD.

  The first seven Aspects are each one part of your inner-world. To organize all the Aspects in a certain manner is to build a world. The world is your inner-organization that encompasses both what happens within the body – where all your thoughts, plans, joys, miseries, take place – and what happens beyond the body – your surroundings. The World Aspect is only available once you have worked on the first seven Aspects for some time, and have increased your understanding of them and of how they are connected. Once you are more familiar with all the Aspects, and with the relationships between each of them, then you can begin to put them into action as one whole. The following exercises each presents one way of going about building a world. Each exercise has its own merits, and having this limited number of sequences keeps your efforts consistent and fresh.

  Exercise One: building a world with the Aspects in their respective order.

  You can build a world by running your attention through the Aspects in the order they are presented. With each Aspect the world gets built. The sequence of the Aspects is your means to make a sequence for your inner-life, a sequence to your thoughts and feelings. Each Aspect is set up upon the foundation of the previous ones. You look at how many Aspects you can set up before the world collapses. It’s like a deck of cards that you try to make a house with, and every piece needs to be in place in order to support the whole. Sometimes it is easier and sometimes less so to get into the sequence of Aspects. To get into them is all about making proper efforts. And this is an exercise in will.

  As soon as you remember to work, straight off begin with Aspect One. The aim of Aspect One is: to notice where attention is, what it feels like, and understand why you should be aware of where your attention is and what it feels like. You persist in making efforts on Aspect One until you realize a change has happened to you, and then you take the understanding you have and begin work on Aspect Two. The aim of Aspect two is: to observe the state of identification that is present. Aspects One and Two are already inseparable, any effort to establish one is also an effort to establish the other.

  You bring the cumulative understanding of the first two Aspects into Aspect Three, where the aim is: to observe the activities in the four centres of mind, the connections between the centres, and to not identify to their reactions with equanimity. And the resultant of these three Aspects is brought into the fourth, where the aim is: to observe the flow of selves, and to separate your work self from them. All four Aspects are now brought into the fifth, where the aim is: to make efforts on living with aims, in order to step out of imagination and allow the way for a self that lives in intelligence.

  The resultant of the first five Aspects are now brought into Aspect Six, where the aim is: to exercise the will of intelligence. And these six Aspects are now understood through the seventh Aspect, where the aim is: to observe and make use of the role of your neurology in your efforts. All of these seven Aspects, in the connected whole that they now stand, are together the world you are living in. The aim of this eighth Aspect is: to know the entire world all at once, and to feel the entire world all at once.

  The aim of Aspect Eight requires you to keep going back over the ground you have already covered. You can look at each Aspect as one part of an apparatus, so that there are seven parts where each part has further sub-parts. You have to check the parts of this apparatus from Aspect One to Aspect Seven, in that order, each Aspect building upon the others. Then you need to experience the entirety of the Aspects all at once, which means that you are working on Aspect Eight. Sometimes the parts will be weaker, and sometimes stronger, just as sometimes the whole will be weaker, and sometimes stronger.

  At first you may find it’s so slow: Aspect One takes five or ten minutes to get a feel for, then Aspect Two takes awhile before Aspect Three becomes clear...and then you slip into identification and lose your attention for making efforts. But if you keep practicing, you will sometimes find that as soon as you remember about Aspect One right away you see where attention is at and then observe state, and automatically you observe state through Aspect Three, and immediately you are at Aspect Four making the separation between your many selves and your work selves. And right away you are connecting with your aims and being on the edge of your seat looking into how imagination is going to try and tear it all down. And immediately you try to ‘do’, to exercise will in support of the aims. And you observe and make use of your neurology to help establish the intelligence.

  End of exercise one.

  Exercise Two: building a world without a pre-ordained order of Aspects.

  You don’t have to begin with Aspect One every time. Sometimes you will notice that you are identified, and immediately realize it is such-and-such a personality that is using this part of this centre and that part of that centre. Then you might have a new understanding into how this personality lives in imagination, and what the self must be accordingly. In this example, you experienced four different Aspects, and just by going with the flow of your attention. You began with one particular Aspect, then noticed how another was connected, and then another, and in this way can go setting up the seven Aspects. This can be a very useful way of making connections between Aspects that wouldn’t be noticed if you only worked on them sequentially.

  Aspect Eight is the point where you “wake up” and look at which Aspects, which parts of them, you were caught up in. At different times there are different Aspects that are more predominant in your experience. Each time you allow your attention to look at whatever Aspects are more evident, you allow the Aspects to get lined up in a certain manner, as your current understanding lines them up. With practice, you will find that a certain line up “feels right”, because you can keep hold of the parts and their relations and the whole.

  End of exercise two.

  Exercise Three: building a world beginning at Aspect Four (and five).

  This exercise begins when you notice you are identified with a self that has nothing to do with work personality. First you need to realize, “this is just a self, it definitely feels real, and it is real because I believe it is who I am, but I am identified with it because there are many other selves who I am at other times.” Then, based on the realization that you are not this ‘I’ or the many others (Aspect Four), look at what is going on in the four centres that supports this self (Aspect Three), then look at the state the self with its control of the centres is living in (Aspect Two), and then look at the space of attention and how it is being used (Aspect One), then look at how all this together is merely imagination, how none of it needs to be real, how all the many different parts of yourself are caught up in identification (Aspect Five), and then look at how the self and how all the other parts have full control over what you do, think, feel, plan, respond, react, and so on (Aspect Six), then look at the role of neurons in all this (Aspect Seven), and finally look at the entire world that results from all of this, the inner-life of the self that believes it is real (Aspect Eight).

  This should take a few minutes, five minutes or a little more. Now see yourself all at once, to have a wide and comprehensive snapshot of who you are, of the ‘I’ that you are, and how this ‘I’ wants to live. When you have this picture of yourself, then return to Aspect Four and begin the “this is not I” exercise. You want to separate from this ‘I’ following the above sequence of Aspects. Take about five minutes to bring about a state of separation in the first seven Aspects.

  Making a separation within each Aspect has to be done properly. Proper efforts are needed to make a proper separation. A successful separation will create a vacuum in each Aspect, and the aims you have already set up will easily rush in to fill these vacuums. You can see that these efforts first have to take place in every Aspect at once, and then all the Aspects together. There is no one Aspect that is the “center” of the operation. When aims fill the vacuums that separation produces, then a self living an intelligence can take hold in each of these points.

  End of exercise three.

  Exercise Four: the I-AM-ME exercise.

  Spend three to five minutes on each of the first three parts, and repeat these three parts several times. Then spend as much time as you have on part four.

  (Part One): establishing the AM.

  Begin with awareness of respiration, and sensing the space of attention and state in order to move out of the limitations imagination sets up. When you have arrived at a spacious calm, then shift your attention to the body. You want to do a relaxation, sensing, and filling, all the while sensing where attention and state are. When you arrive at the energy body, be aware of this as AM.

  (Part Two): establishing the ME.

  Begin with awareness of respiration, and sensing the space of attention and state in order to move out of the limitations imagination sets up. When you have arrived at a spacious calm, then shift your attention to the four centres of mind. You want to hold the intellectual, emotional, moving, and instinctive centres, with all their parts, in your attention at once. You want to separate from each of them by observing them with equanimity. In a way you actually experience a sense of detachment, as though these centres don’t belong to you, you aren’t quite sure what they are for. When you arrive at this understanding, be aware of this as ME.

  (Part Three): establishing the I.

  Begin with awareness of respiration, and sensing the space of attention and state in order to move out of the limitations imagination sets up. When you have arrived at a spacious calm, then shift your attention to the aims you have already set up. You have made a collection of aims because you are interested in what they lead towards. Although you may have many aims, choose only one or two for now. Choose an aim that you are really interested in, an aim that when you remember it makes you ache in desire of it. When you arrive at this aim, and the intense emotional longing for it, be aware of this as I.

  (Part Four): building a world with I-AM-ME.

      End of exercise four.

      Exercise Five: where you go with a world you have built.

  Once it is available to you, the World Aspect can become your morning meditation, as well as the meditation to work on during the day. You can build your world in any number of ways, and in so doing you are choosing how you understand and relate with what goes on in you and in how you experience your surroundings.

  The efforts you make in bringing all seven Aspects into one whole give you a wider inner-world(life), for now seven different Aspects, each with their own parts, are all at work in you at the same time, in some unique relationship. This is the limits of your experience, and these are new limits: new limits that act as doorways, new possibilities, and you have your entire inner-world there all at once to make use of these possibilities...until imagination and identification tear it apart.

  When you notice that you are caught up in identification at some point of an Aspect, this realization is enough to begin looking at the identification from the Aspect itself. Whatever you experience can be looked at from some Aspect or another. Each point where you were caught up is now understood as a limitation, and each limitation is now understood as a doorway.

  You apply the world you have built to every part of your experiences. From this very notable position, where you are as constantly as possible observing the whole and the parts, with all the Aspects brought together into a single apparatus, that (a new form of work can get underway: the intentional addition of intelligence upon Observing ‘I’, which will now have to acquire another set of tools to bring life to the intelligence.) intelligence comes to life from a different position.

  End of exercise five.

[drzaiusmusic]

Living Infinity feat. Killacat - Another Day (Seeking Uniqueness, Chapter II)