#746 Attention Theft

     Mindfulness is to be practiced continuously, otherwise, in our digital age, we're almost continuously mindless:

     "Every time you open your phone or your computer, your brain is walking onto a battleground. The aggressors are the architects of your digital world, and their weapons are the apps, news feeds, and notifications in your field of view every time you look at a screen.

     They are all attempting to capture your most scarce resource — your attention — and take it hostage for money. Your captive attention is worth billions to them in advertising and subscription revenue.

     This might sound familiar: In an idle moment you open your phone to check the time. 19 minutes later you regain consciousness in a completely random corner of your digital world: a stranger’s photo stream, a surprising news article, a funny YouTube clip. You didn’t mean to do that. What just happened?

     This is not your fault — it is by design.

     The digital rabbit hole you just tumbled down is funded by advertising, aimed at you. Almost every 'free' app or service you use depends on this surreptitious process of unconsciously turning your eyeballs into dollars, and they have built sophisticated methods of reliably doing it. You don’t pay money for using these platforms, but make no mistake, you are paying for them — with your time, your attention, and your perspective."

       Tobias Rose-Stockwell. "This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit

The story of how one metric has changed the way you see the world." https://medium.com/the-mission/the-enemy-in-our-feeds-e86511488de

#654 Even More Craving & Avoidance Won't Get You There, Sorry ...

      “Obsessing about getting what you want, and avoiding what you don’t want, does not result in happiness.” 
                              Pema Chodron
 
     “The ‘secret’ of life that we are all looking for is just this: to develop through sitting and daily life practice the power and courage to return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment – even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness.”
                              Charlotte Joko Beck

     “Your true home is wakefulness. Go home!”
                              Ashin Tejaniya

 

bitstream   www.dpreview.com

#497 Ethics & True Well-being

     "Ethical value ... is built into the very fabric of consciousness. ... true well-being can only come from expressions of generosity, kindness, & wisdom, while greed, hatred, & delusion will always result in harm."           Andrew Olendzki PhD

     The above statement is not to be confused with a "should", be it societal or religious. People over the ages have come to understand this as a natural law - simply the way things work - much like gravity. Nevertheless, each person seems to need to discover or relearn this for themselves. "Shoulds" tend to automatically generate resistance in us at some level. A less confrontational way of learning wise advice (that seldom sinks in immediately), is by holding it in the back of our minds as a riddle, a koan, or open question - to be pondered over a long time, even a lifetime. Life presents innumerable opportunities to learn experientially how things work. 

Les Lovas watercolor - Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia

#424 Strive for the "Sure Thing" - OR - Trust Open-Hearted Engagement?

     It makes sense to put more care, time & effort into a project, so it will turn out closer to what we hope for. Of course it's easy to go overboard, only to (re)discover that no matter how hard we try, we can't perfectly control things. "The hurrier I goes, the behinder I gets!"
     Interestingly, mindfulness advises focusing on the process itself, rather than the goal. In fact, (excessively) focusing on the goal is considered a major impediment to reaching it. Excessive goal-orientation is "driven" by greed, fear, anxiety or some combination of these unhealthy emotions, which virtually block one's ability to pay attention to the journey - the actual path to the goal.
     We optimally attend to what we're doing when we're fully engaged - our mind-heart-body is open to the actual process eg taking care of a little child or pet. Our focus of attention is almost exclusively experiential, with minimal narrative focus. There seems to be a direct connection of some sort between the silent depths of ourselves and that of the person, animal or activity. There's a sense of love, kindness or perhaps a primal recognition. It feels very still, peaceful, timeless and right - radically different from greed, fear or anxiety. 
     One may even say that open-hearted engagement is the antidote for greed, fear & anxiety. We know both ends of this spectrum, but perhaps have more experience with the latter. Can we trust the former to guide our lives? Our moment-by-moment way of being holds the answer. Can we observe what guides (or drives) our behavior & the quality of life that naturally arises?

Bob Kaune   www.dpreview.com

#336 Meditating - OR - just Thinking?

     Sitting still and trying to think things through is not meditating. Yet having thoughts does not by itself exclude meditating. Useful instructions from well-known meditation teacher Ashin Tejaniya:  

"Trying to create something is greed. 
Rejecting what is happening is aversion.
Not knowing if something is happening or has stopped happening is delusion.

Only to the extent that the observing mind has no greed, aversion or anxiety are you truly meditating.

Don’t have any expectations, don’t want anything,
don’t be anxious, because if these attitudes are in your mind, it becomes difficult to meditate."

     Having greed, aversion & delusion doesn't make one a "bad" or "evil" person, but these do cause suffering. We meditate to scientifically, experientially, learn how life works - how to let go of greed, aversion & delusion - thus reduce suffering, and live with joy.

Anne Bastedo   http://www.serenityimages.ca