Back to the Pits of Awareness · How Self-Awareness Vanishes
⁘ “Back in the pits of awareness once again? Mere moments ago in my calm and lucid abiding. What happened? The basic mechanism is very simple. You abide aloof in your self-awareness. Then a particular concern draws your attention. You enter a role and nest your consciousness there. Back in a fraction of yourself. What can we do about this? It takes patience, it takes persistence, it takes determination. It's a matter of practice and reconditioning.”
Slipped from the high ground,
fell headlong into the swamp.
Here we are again in the pits of awareness,
clawing our way toward baseline clarity.
There I was mere moments ago
in my calm and lucid abiding.
Please explain.
So the basic mechanism here is very simple.
There you are abiding in self-awareness,
aloof from absorption in the world of phenomena.
Then a particular concern domain invokes your attention
and you engage, naturally.
In short order, mesmerized by the field of activities,
immersed in your role,
making it a nest for your consciousness,
all self-awareness vanishes –
you are back in a fraction of yourself.
Then what do we do about this and
how do we prevent the recurrence
of this loss of footing?
Simple cultivation of awareness,
reconditioning our attention,
reestablishing our detachment over and over again,
when our tentacles begin to drift into fractions of our being.
That is all it takes, but it takes patience,
it takes persistence, it takes determination.
It's a matter of practice,
it's a matter of reconditioning,
and it's a matter of your release
from being mesmerized by yourself
in specific situations.