Strange Beautiful Musik

Strange Beautiful Notes
Room ii

Encounters in Presence, Music, and Healing

Tommy (d)

I find myself pondering how to go about describing the arrival of help when the help did not announce itself as rescue. Tricky one, that.It is difficult to say how he entered my life, because the usual words are too large and too sentimental. And yet, without him, I do not know how certain things would have become possible.Before him, I had completed the first year of training and, given my track record with academics, had done unusually well.What seemed to hold everything in place were the first intimations of a calling, which had begun to grow in me in the months leading up to that first year. So when I arrived on campus, I was quiet, but it was the sort of quiet that carried beneath it a laser focus — as much as that is possible for a twenty-six-year-old.Because the sense of call had not come from within the campus, I arrived with an unusual sense of direction. The campus, and the training itself, became secondary. They were a necessary backdrop, perhaps, against which to wrestle with the call.I did what needed to be done, but I did not go out of my way to become overly involved in campus life.At the start of the second year, I decided to tell my mentor explicitly about this sense of calling, which had been brewing.It was very different from the vision he had for me.I knew there would be resistance. But having grappled with it for two years, I felt I should let him know.Bad move, in retrospect.Though understandable.I was only twenty-six, after all.My mentor did not take well to it.Thus began the gradual slide downward — in concentration, discernment, and my ability to meet the necessary requirements of the training. I tried to tell a faculty member on campus, and while the response was listening, it was clear that nothing meaningful would happen. My mentor was too influential.Somewhere in the second half of that year, we had one of those mandatory elective sessions — a nice oxymoron in itself. It was held in the chapel, and perhaps made available to more than one class.I cannot remember much of what was taught.Except one phrase.Psychotherapy, the lecturer said, is a friendship with the divine.Something in that phrase stirred me.At the end of the lecture, I found myself walking toward the front, where several others had lined up to speak with him.This was very unusual behaviour for me. I was not the sort of person who easily asked for prayer, counsel, or advice. Even if I felt drawn to approach someone, my tendency was to resist the impulse, or even walk away.And yet the stirring was strong.Not simple to ignore.I found myself walking.When I reached him, I began crying.That too was unusual, a public display of emotion and vulnerability, in a setting where I would normally have held myself together.He put his hand on my shoulder, and with a kind smile said, “I can see you, if you wish.”I said, “I cannot afford to pay.”He responded that we could meet once a month. Without payment.That is how I soon came to find myself waiting for that one Saturday a month, to take the fifteen-minute bus ride to his house, about two or three kilometres away.

Tommy (e)

One thing I remember about Tommy was that he gave real time.The meetings were sometimes very long — occasionally three hours or so. And when he became tired, he did not hide it, push through, perform endless availability, or quietly resent the demand.He would simply say something like:“I need to rest now, because I am reaching my limits.”It was such a simple sentence, but it was almost unimaginable to me at the time: someone naming their limit cleanly, without accusation, without collapse, without making the other person responsible for it, and without turning the limit into rejection.What I recollect is the shock.And the relief.And the astonishment.That kind of honesty is so rare that the nervous system almost does not know what to do with it at first.Because usually, when someone reaches a limit, they disguise it. They withdraw, become irritated, perform professionalism, hide behind policy, or subtly make the other person feel like too much.That is probably why it landed as both shock and relief.Shock, because one expects limits to arrive with punishment, shame, irritation, or abandonment.Relief, because here was a limit that did not withdraw love or presence. It was just reality, spoken cleanly, without wounding.

Centering Prayer (b)
OOPS — I Did it Again!

What Counts as a Thought?

In the second analogy of meditation — the scuba diver — the definition of a thought is itself deliciously radical.A thought is not merely an idea. It is not only a sentence in the mind, or an argument, or a memory, or a plan, or an image.A thought is anything that draws attention to a focal point.That changes everything.A sudden sadness is a thought.
A flash of irritation is a thought.
A beautiful illumination is a thought.
A remembered conversation is a thought.
A voice from God is a thought.
An itch on the nose is a thought.
A surge of bliss is a thought.
A pain in the knee is a thought.
An overwhelming urge to go to the bathroom is a thought.This is not a slant that these things are unreal. Nor are they unimportant. And it certainly isn’t the sort of spiritual bypassing in which the body does not matter, or feelings are being dismissed, or where divine communication is being reduced to mere mental chatter.They are “thoughts” in this very particular contemplative sense because each one has the same effect: it gathers attention around a focal point.

Anything That Says, “Come Here"

In one form or another, however intelligent the guise, they tend to say a variation of the same thing: come here.Look at me.
Solve me.
Interpret me.
Scratch me.
Follow me.
Fear me.
Enjoy me.
Obey me.
Preserve me.
Explain me.
Tell someone about me later.

The Beautiful Boat Is Still a Boat

Even the "spiritual" thought can do this. Perhaps especially the spiritual thought. A sudden illumination may arrive with such beauty that the practitioner is immediately tempted to climb into it, examine it, decorate it, theologize it, remember it, turn it into a teaching, or preserve it as a spiritual possession.And in this form of meditation, that too is a boat.This is where this second form of meditation becomes almost ruthless in its gentleness.It does not divide the passing boats into noble boats and ignoble boats, spiritual boats and unspiritual boats, meaningful boats and meaningless boats. The point is not the content of the boat. The point is the relocation of attention.Has attention left the rock?
Has awareness been drawn upward into a focal point?
Has the diver discovered himself no longer resting in the depth, but enclosed inside the hold of some passing vessel?Then, in this very precise sense, a thought has happened.This can feel humiliating, though not in a shaming way. It is humiliating because it reveals how little mastery one actually has over attention. The mind does not only run after crude distractions. It can be taken by noble ones. It can be carried away by insight, beauty, devotion, compassion, bodily discomfort, theological brilliance, emotional urgency, or the sudden certainty that one has finally understood the whole thing.

OOPS, I Did It Again

And then comes the small, comic awakening.Oops. I did it again.There is a special mercy in being able to laugh here.It is the sort of laughter that makes an awkward little hole in the boat of spiritual grandiosity. One wakes up in the boat again, perhaps in the hold of a very impressive boat, with incense burning and sacred music playing and prayer flags hanging from the mast announcing “Profound Realization.”

The Gentle Humility of Returning

And still.... the instruction is the same.Climb out.Swim back down.Return to the rock.This is why the second form requires such profound humility. It does not allow the practitioner to build identity around being a good meditator. The practice is not proven by never leaving the rock. The practice is proven by returning without drama when one discovers one has left.And the definition of thought protects the practice from subtle forms of self-deception.Without this definition, one might think: “I was not distracted. I was receiving an insight.”Or: “I was not distracted. I was processing emotion.”Or: “I was not distracted. I was listening to God.”Or: “I was not distracted. I was noticing my body.”But in this form of meditation, the question is not first of all whether the content was true, meaningful, spiritual, psychological, or bodily. The question is simpler and more exacting:
Did it draw attention to a focal point?If yes, then for the purposes of the practice, it is a thought.Outside the period of meditation, the insight may need to be reflected on. The emotion may need care. The bodily signal may need practical response. The voice from God may require discernment. The memory may belong to healing. The pain may need attention. The urge to go to the bathroom, (believe it to not!!) may, in fact, require getting up.But within the prayer itself, the instruction remains spare.Notice.
Release.
Return.The beauty of this is that it creates a radical equality among experiences. Grand thoughts and petty thoughts are treated the same way. Sacred thoughts and ridiculous thoughts are treated the same way. The itch on the nose and the luminous revelation both have to surrender their power to organize attention.This is not anti-intellectual. It is not anti-body. It is not anti-feeling. It is not anti-revelation.It is simply loyal to the rock.
The rock is the deeper consent.
The rock is the surrendered place.
The rock is the place beneath commentary, beneath management, beneath spiritual acquisition, beneath the endless attempt to turn experience into possession.So the diver does not even need to rank the boats. He only needs, when he wakes up in one, to recognize where he is.Then, with as little fuss as possible, and perhaps with a small inward smile, he climbs out of the hold, slips back into the water, and returns down again.

Open Mind, Open Heart, Thomas Keating

Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Cynthia Bourgeault

The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice, Cynthia Bourgeault

The Heart of Centering Prayer: Part 1 of 4, Cynthia Bourgeault

Centering Prayer (c)
Errr..... Return to What Exactly?

After All This Talk of Returning

This is the beginning of a whole different way of holding attention.In fact, it may be the tip of the tip of an iceberg that goes way, way down into a different understanding of what attention even is.And this different understanding of attention is at stake in everything that happens in this second form of meditation.

Attention as a Beam

Normally, when we speak of attention, we mean something like an energy connecting a subject to an object.I pay attention to my driving.
I pay attention to the lecture.
I pay attention to what I am reading.
I pay attention to what I am doing.
I pay attention to my breathing.The grammar is revealing.Whenever someone says, “Pay attention,” the almost automatic response is: to what?Because in our ordinary understanding, attention requires an object. There is an “I” over here, and something else over there. Attention is the line, the beam, the energetic bridge between the two.This is not wrong. In fact, this form of attention is immensely important. Without it, one could not read, drive, cook, study, listen well, or live responsibly in the world.This form of attention, is the beginning of much formatory instruction around meditation. The practitioner learns to take attention back from the chaos of involuntary distraction and place it consciously on a chosen object.A mantra.
The breath.
A candle flame.
A sacred phrase.
The sensation of walking.
The movement of the abdomen.
The sound of a bell.

When the Object Grabs the Subject

This is already revolutionary for most people, because most ordinary attention is not truly voluntary. It is grabbed. Something flashes, vibrates, threatens, seduces, entertains, or irritates — and attention swivels toward it. Then something else grabs it, and attention swivels again.The power seems to lie in the object. The object hooks the subject.This is what many traditions are naming when they speak of monkey mind. Attention is not seated within the person. It is scattered across whatever can claim it.So introductory spiritual training often begins by reversing this. Attention is gradually brought under conscious control. Instead of attention being seized by objects, the practitioner learns to place attention deliberately and keep it there. The power begins to return to the subject.This is no small thing.It means that attention no longer belongs entirely to the world of stimulus. The practitioner can choose to remain with the breath even when the breath is not interesting. The practitioner can return to the mantra even when the mind would prefer entertainment, planning, fantasy, resentment, or spiritual drama. Attention becomes less reactive and more obedient to intention.But in these concentration and awareness practices, there is still an “I” who is doing the returning.There is a subject and an object.There is an I who returns to my breath.
An I returning to my mantra.
An I who observes this sensation.
An I noticing that thought.
An I who comes back to the chosen point.This is profound and necessary training. But it is still operating within the subject-object structure.There is an “I” here, there is a breath or mantra there, and attention travels between them.The second form of meditation — the scuba diver — is subtler.It does not merely ask, “Can you return your attention to the breath?”It asks something more radically destabilizing:
Who is the “I” who is returning?
And what exactly are they returning to?What is this subject that stands over here and attends to an object over there?What happens when attention is no longer organized as a beam connecting a subject to a focal point?

The Rock Cannot Be Grasped

This is where the scuba diver analogy becomes so important.The analogy gives us a rock because language needs a rock. The imagination needs somewhere to place the diver. We need to picture the diver returning somewhere.But in the actual practice, there is no literal rock.And this is what makes the practice so steep, even though it appears gentle.In mantra meditation, the mantra is there. In breath awareness, the breath is there. In candle meditation, the flame is there. In awareness meditation, there are feelings and bodily sensations. The practitioner may wander, but there is an object to return to. One knows, at least in principle, where to go back.But in the second form, the “rock” cannot be grasped as an object. If one turns the rock into an object of attention, then the rock itself becomes another boat.This is very subtle.Returning is not the movement of a subject back toward a chosen object. It is the release of the whole subject-object contraction.This means that the practice is not primarily about placing attention somewhere. It is about withdrawing attention from focalization itself.Every time attention is drawn toward a focal point, a thought has happened. It doesn’t have to simply be a verbal thought. A thought, in this contemplative sense, is anything that gathers attention into a focal point.A memory does this.
A fear does this.
A bodily itch does this.
A surge of grief does this.
A mystical illumination does this.
A voice from God does this.
A theological insight does this.
An urgent need to go to the bathroom does this.The content may be humble or grand, ridiculous or sacred, psychologically important or spiritually luminous. But the movement is the same: attention has been gathered around something.The field has collapsed into a point.The diver is in the boat.This is why the definition of thought in the second form is so radical. It is not defining thought by content. It is defining thought by the movement of attention. A thought is not primarily “an idea.” A thought is a focalizing event.Something says, “Come here.”
Look at me.
Interpret me.
Scratch me.
Solve me.
Fear me.
Treasure me.
Write me down.
Turn me into a teaching.
Protect me.
Preach me.This is why even spiritual experiences are boats, in this analogy of meditation. Perhaps they are among the most seductive boats of all, because the practitioner can justify remaining inside them.“This is not distraction,” one says.
“This is insight. This is discernment. This is God. This is healing. This is important.”And it may indeed be important.
But during the practice, importance is not the category.The question is simpler and more exacting:
Has attention been drawn into a focal point?
If yes, then in this precise contemplative sense, it is a thought.This is not a dismissal of the experience. It is not saying the experience is false, trivial, or merely mental. It is simply noticing that attention has been organized around an object.And the second form of meditation is exploring what attention is when it is not organized around an object.

Attention as Field

This is where the image of mercury becomes so beautiful.Attention usually behaves like a beam. It goes out toward something. It connects subject to object. It reaches, grasps, studies, names, likes, dislikes, compares, interprets.But attention can also gather itself.It can have tensile strength.It can become more like a living field than a line.Like mercury, it can scatter into a puddle, but it can also collect into a shimmering, quivering whole. It has cohesion. It has a kind of inner surface tension. It does not need to be attached to an external object in order to exist. It can hold itself.This is a very different configuration of awareness.One is no longer aware by splitting the field into “me here” and “that there.” There is awareness, but it is not organized by opposition. There is consciousness, but it is not dependent on a focal object. There is presence, but not the familiar subject standing over against the world.This is why the second form is not simply concentration.Concentration strengthens the beam.This practice gathers the field.Concentration says: place attention here.This practice says: release whatever has captured attention, and allow attention to recollect itself.Concentration still has a chosen object.This practice moves toward objectless awareness.And objectless awareness does not mean blankness. It does not mean being unconscious, vague, spaced out, or dissociated. In fact, it may be more awake, not less. But the awakeness is not organized around a focal point. It is more like a whole-field knowing.One is conscious of the whole without having to split the whole into the usual subject-object polarity.This is why the second practice can feel so difficult to explain.The moment one says, “Return to the rock,” the mind imagines an object. The moment one says, “Rest in awareness,” awareness becomes something to look at. The moment one says, “Be present,” presence becomes a subtle project. Even the instruction can become a boat.So the practice must be learned almost by taste. Not by grabbing the rock, but by discovering what it feels like when one has left it.
Not by locating objectless awareness as a new object, but by recognizing the constriction that happens when attention has been captured.This is where the humility comes in:
again and again, one wakes up in the boat.Not only in crude boats. Or only in anxious boats, lustful boats, angry boats, petty boats, or distracted boats. One wakes up in elegant boats, spiritual boats, theological boats, compassionate boats, healing boats, boats with incense and stained glass and a small choir singing in the hull.And still, the music blaring from the speakers is: “Oops, I did it again.”There is something wonderfully freeing about this. The practice does not require one to pretend to be more advanced than one is. It assumes sleepwalking. It assumes capture. It assumes that attention, trained by a lifetime of focalization, will keep collapsing into objects.The work is not to be shocked by this.The work is to notice, release, and return.

Returning from Thing-ness

But now “return” has a deeper meaning.The practitioner is not returning to a thing.The practitioner is returning from thing-ness.Returning is not the movement of attention back toward an object called the rock, or the breath, or the mantra, or even awareness itself. It is allowing attention to come back into its own collectedness. It is the release of the whole subject-object contraction — the whole machinery of me-attending-to-that.This also changes the meaning of subjectivity.At first, one might say the practice returns power from the object to the subject. In ordinary life, the object grabs attention. In formatory spiritual training, the subject learns to reclaim attention and place it voluntarily, on an object of one’s choosing.But in the second form, even this is not the final movement. Because the “subject” who proudly reclaims attention can itself become another focal point. The “I who meditates well,” the “I who returns,” the “I who is becoming spiritually mature” — this too can become a boat.So the second form does not merely strengthen the ordinary subject.It loosens the whole structure by which the ordinary subject stands over against objects.It is not simply that attention is returned to “me.”Rather, attention begins to be thawed from the habitual structure of a self over here attending to an object over there. The reflex of turning awareness into an invisible line between myself and something else, begins to thin.What begins to emerge instead is a new center of perceptivity. A deeper, more collected awareness. A field with tensile strength. A center that does not need to define itself over against an object in order to be awake.This is why the practice feels both gentle and merciless.Gentle, because nothing dramatic is required. One does not fight thoughts. One does not analyze them. One does not suppress them. One does not even need to classify them. One simply lets go and returns.Merciless, because everything can be revealed as a thought.Even the beautiful thing.
Even the urgent thing.
Even the holy thing.
Even the thought about how well the meditation is going.
Even the thought about objectless awareness.
Even the subtle satisfaction of understanding there is no "rock" to return to.All of it can become a boat.This is not meant to make the practitioner suspicious of life. Outside the meditation, one must think, discern, respond, remember, plan, care, study, create, and act. The world of subject and object is not evil. It is the necessary operating system for ordinary life.But it is not the only operating system.The second form of meditation introduces another possibility: awareness without immediate division, attention without focal capture, presence without possession.The boats are still there.
The river is still there.
The ordinary mind still does what it does.But beneath the surface movement, another kind of attention becomes possible — gathered, tensile, whole, objectless, awake.And perhaps this is why the scuba diver image works so well, even though the rock finally disappears. The diver is not learning to stare at the boats more carefully. Nor is he learning to cling to the rock as an object. He is learning, again and again, the felt difference between being enclosed in a passing vessel and belonging to the depth.The whole practice is hidden in that difference.To wake up in the boat.
To smile, perhaps with a little embarrassment.
To climb out.
To swim down.
To discover that the depth was never absent.
Only attention had been captured.

Open Mind, Open Heart, Thomas Keating

Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Cynthia Bourgeault

The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice, Cynthia Bourgeault

The Heart of Centering Prayer: Part 1 of 4, Cynthia Bourgeault