Here’s Why to Space Out:
• Addiction is always an addiction of attention.
• Freedom is a freedom of attention.
• Attention is love.
• Attention in its natural state is space-like. (Unbounded love.)
• Attention short-circuited, is planet like. (bounded love)
• Our education, our culture, our physical experience all lead toward short-circuiting of our attention, e.g., short-circuiting of our love, such that most of us, most of the time, experience our attention as planet-like.
• Addiction is attention in its planet-like (short-circuited) state, caught in a particular gravity pattern, revolving around a particular star or two (e.g., tobacco, sex, money, fame, booze, or daily soap operas.)
• Simply remembering our natural state, (e.g., love, space-like attention,) again and again and again until it again becomes our daily experience, is the mechanism for resolving addiction.
• We need not fight the planets that move through space, that move through our attention —nothing wrong with tobacco, sex, money, fame, booze or daily soap operas. We experience them all in passing, in their right time and place, their right orbit. Yet we ourselves remain free, in unbounded love, space-like attention.
• A craving is a short circuit of attention.
• Dissolving a craving is a return to the space of attention.
Here’s HOW:
• So how do we return to the space of attention?
• To “un-train” our planetary attention, we simply devote more and more time every day—formally and informally– to letting go of the innumerable planets—and putting attention on attention itself. We intentionally sense the space-like attention that upholds and infuses and surrounds the constricted planetary attention!
• We allow thoughts to rise up and fall away while our attention is on attention itself.
• We allow images to rise up and fall away, while we place attention on attention itself.
• We allow sounds, sights, feelings, to rise up and fall away, while we place attention on attention itself.
• As we walk around, we inquire, and remind ourselves, “space-like attention?” or, after we’ve practiced enough, simply, “Space?”
• What Keeps Us Addicted and How to Go Beyond:
• The alternate rising of desire and fear is what keeps us addicted. Desire and fear are two sides of the same coin. It is the coin of attention, and more specifically, short-circuited attention.
• We desire our “star of choice”—tobacco, sex, booze, money, fame, whatever. Desire is attention going down a memory path, attention dressed up in a memory costume. (Without a memory, we have no desires!) Attention goes to the bottle, or the smokes, or the relationship, again and again. This is desire. We don’t need to fight our desires, or change our desires—attention in its orbit around the star. We simply need to recognize the wider space in which both the planet and the star are present, are arising, moving. We feel the space around them. Even enjoy the space around them. As we recognize the space (inhabit the space!) around the star and the planet, in which the star and planet are arising, both the planet and the star diminish in size. We, being space, allow desires to simply rise up and fall away, while we remain steady, free.
• We fear the “death star,” in all of its various forms— we fear death itself, pain, suffering, lack, limitation. Fear is attention going down the “projection” path, attention dressed up as a projection. (If we don’t project into the future, we have no fears!) We project the suffering we might experience without our “star of choice,” be it person place or thing. We don’t need to fight our fears, our projections. Again, we simply recognize the space in which they are arising. As we return to the space of attention in which our projections are arising, our fears are arising, we see them steadily diminish in size. They still appear and disappear, rise up and fall away, but in our space-like attention, we are fearless.
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