The Quality of Awareness: Clarity

When I walked the dog early this morning, Venus and Jupiter were just above the eastern horizon--bright, clear, sparkling. Usually we have valley fog summer mornings, but the humidity is low today. It was also unusually cool, about 50 degrees. Something about 'clear and cool' that refreshes the soul.

If I was in charge of the weather, it would be clear and cool a lot more often.

Sogyal Rimpoche, the displaced and cultured Tibetan scholar and teacher who lives in France, the author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, says (like most Tibetan teachers) that it's very helpful when we meditate to keep 20% of our focus on the breath. It's very helpful--but, he says, it's not enough. He strongly advises that we keep 20% of our focus on the breath, 60% on the contents of consciousness--and the remaining 20% of our attention on doing it right!

Part of the human brain is dedicated to assimilating familiar daily mental activities into automatic processes so that the main part of our conscious minds can attend to hunting and gathering, looking for mates, passing on our DNA, protecting our clan, and other 'essential' mammalian stuff.

So even our regular attempts at being alert while meditating can be taken under the wing of our trying-to-be-helpful evolutionary brains. But...the thing about consciousness is you have to be conscious! Dulled focus doesn't lead to clarity. This makes Clearness another vital thread in the quality of mindful Awareness.

Unfortunately some of the words we use to highlight this particular quality of awareness can sound TOO effortful. If we say to ourselves "Stay vigilant!" most of us would shift into something too stressful to be helpful. Maybe "Keep alert," without an exclamation point is better. Yet the very word alert is a military word that comes from the Italian "All' erta" which was a military term: "To the watch tower!"

Nevertheless, without ALERTNESS, contemplative practice, while perhaps relaxing, will rarely be enlightening.

Like so many things outside the small self, the strand of clarity in meditation is a both/and thing--a restful vigilance, an un-pressured watchfulness. The origin of the word vigilance is the Latin 'vigilare,' which simply means 'keep awake.' That's a common and reasonably good way of saying what mindfulness is--to be awake.

When we do our formal practice, we can cultivate a habit of keeping awake, of bringing our wandering attention all' erta!--"To the watch tower!" As we do, we see stuff we'd never see otherwise. And seeing, we begin to understand. Understanding, we get a little wiser. Being wiser, we're in a better place to recognize what to keep in life and what to let go of, which 'stuff' is fruitful which 'stuff' is weedy.

As always, what we cultivate privately, interiorly, we also experience outwardly in community. We get better at being attentive to what others are saying, feeling, hoping and meaning. We also become more receptive to the grace and power of everything else--the practical, the spiritual, the natural.

At certain times in the year, every morning just after dawn geese fly over my house--some years 3 or 4 geese, other years as many as 12 or 15. The fly just to the east, coming from the same place in the sky where Venus and Jupiter were rising this morning. I assume these geese rest here in Jackson County for a couple of weeks on their way south in autumn and north in spring.

Both they and I are up about the same time. I'm usually studying or meditating when I hear them. And even if I'm doing 'formal' practice, the second their honking becomes clear, I jump up and run outside. Being 'formal' can go to hell--I'm not gonna miss the sacrament of pilgrim geese!

Every now and then I have a smaller but similar experience when bringing my attention back into formal practice. If I can continue bringing this same kind of joyful, receptive attention to my life, inside and out, I will see stuff, learn stuff, be fed and be blessed.

So--when you do your formal practice, do it right! Weave clearness into each breath cycle. Do it vigilantly--and gently. Strain to be watchful--in a completely laid back way. Grit your teeth--and chuckle. Jump up whenever attention is dull and bleary and feast your eyes on whatever is sweeping across your world.

Clarity is both a practice and an outcome of mindful work. When we focus more purposefully we see more clearly.