Yesterday, sitting alone in my zen like state - I was told to shift my focus inside... but then the questions came to me first before the answer. I wanted to know the answer to how that could be done. I thought of the complex task I was told to do. My mind had to break down the bits of data to explain this "inner experience" I was supposed to have, but then I couldn't know for sure until I knew I had to experience it.
The common influence many spiritual practices has is to do just this. The exercise of taking the external experience away, and look at the internal answers, almost as if the external experience is the effect and the internal experience is the cause. Things get kafufuled as its seems when we look to the external experience for cause, when it is only a mass effect of a shared state of cosmic "excretions" of consciousness.
During my younger years, even up to maybe 12 or 13 years of age, I had an anxiety of sleeping. Sounds silly, but the lesson is very valuable in many cases. Since I was around seven, I had suddenly lay in my bed one night and realized that I had to fall asleep. Every night before this in my life, sleep came so naturally that I hadn't a chance to realize this change of state. I lay there - with the light on above me, waiting and anticipating the sleep to come over me, but the more I became aware of this apparent lack, the more i was awake. I resorted for many nights to my parents bed to simply have the solace I guess to be comforted in my fear of these long nights without sleep until sure enough it would come; every night.
The cure came to me readily when I accepted the fate of the event - with all the disturbing noises having slept in a cabin full of boys, moving, snoring, etc. I accepted that if I could not sleep, I simply will just lie there perfectly content until morning broke. I fell slept perfectly thereafter.
The reason to this analogy is to explain that sleep, and "turning your attention inside" are of the same function. The phenomenon of consciousness (thinking) without the body is a mystery any scientist will never be able to prove since we have millions of accounts known by mouth of NDE like experiences.
so I suppose I'm jumping the gun to say this, but it only makes sense to assume that consciousness survives death. I don't wanna explain this okay? Assuming your a believer of spirit; sleep is a unexplainable timeless oriented state where the higher levels of spirit journey. The body will function the same since the lower levels will remain to keep it breathing and charging in peace.
Now to the idea of turning your attention inside. Its a hard statement to grasp for a similarly impossible task. Sleep is not something you can control with aggressive intent, for it has its natural ways programmed into your cycles. So is consciousness. Telling your attention to be fixed onto itself is like a dog chasing its tail. Try and catch a thought. Tough since it cannot see itself without a mirror. Our mirror is the soul which has the memory of that thought. So catching a thought is impossible unless it has potency to affect other levels of mind to body, of which is can be recalled in time.
Fixing your attention inside is clearly a figure of speech to be aware of the internal instead of external. But once you look "inside" wherever that might be - it becomes a reflection of the outside. I dunno if I'm sure weird that way, but concentrating on internal dialogue always flings me out to external pressures. That is the task for zen tradition - letting things be, externally and internally and observing the changes which are influenced by Mind itself. Capital M for the one mind all minds are shared.
This blog has created so many more questions then it has solved for me. I'll wrap up the big one. The inner self or experience is something you are already participating in. Always and evermore in prayer for every word is called and answered, whether listening or not. The answer is the question we've created. The external experience; the effect which we claim is our cause. Its the answer we we're looking for - but now every cause leads to another cause since we never see the effect. The cause was always inside - which is why its so hard to see inside the answer. The answer is at the beginning, where all things came from - consciousness. We want to understand the cause so we've created this effect - the world around us - changing as we change. A reflection - a mirror of us.
The answers are always in you, which is to me a very encouraging thought because then, you could never be lost. Its also impossible to lose anything. Including sleep.
