THE SIMPLE SENSE OF NOW

Sensing The Changes

Meditations often include listening to everything, or listening for silence. I discuss listening out for changes. It's the alertness to change which is vital to animals, and change always happens now.

Listening out and Nowness

Listening has an immediacy which the other senses don't have, and this is because sounds are sometimes very sudden and over in a split second. Smells and sights usually last at least a few seconds.

Listening to everything is a good first step, but then listen out for specific sounds. Especially nowadays above the constant hum of machines, it is necessary for animals to listen out, to listen actively for specific warning signs, such as bangs, cries, or barks.

Imagine how early man might listen out for distant wild boar, or herds of oxen or buffalo, and nearby tigers or snakes. I often listen out for dogs and children; at night, for hedgehogs and owls. I don't often hear them, that's irrelevant, listening out for them is the vital part.

By empathising with the animals' intensity of broadband awareness, especially by listening out, we can't think. If we start thinking, we stop being aware, and at that moment an animal would be vulnerable.

Chapter Three discusses various other listening exercises, and develops the idea that it's the alertness to change which is vital to any animals survival.

How to Neutralise the Self-perpetuating Thoughts

Being now is much more than just 'not thinking', but not thinking is the first obvious effect.

Without trying it out, you might feel as though there is so much happening, that it would make you crazy to be aware of it all. And it would make you crazy if you had to focus and concentrate on all of it; but to be aware of it all in a broadband way, you can't think at the same time.

Throughout evolution going broadband, has been the unquestionable and natural way to switch off, stop doing everything and be receptive for a moment. And for animals, this is a constant reminder of how it feels to be still, and to be now.

The broadband mode is useless for getting on in life and doing things, but it is very effective against pointless abstract thought. And it's nothing mystical or paradoxical ... it's just practical. Without focusing on anything you can't start thinking about it, and consequently you can't want it, or want to do it. Broadbanding devolves the abstract thinking systems.

In the short term, it stops the continuous chatter in our minds, it's a moments simple and direct peace of mind, a moment of feeling still inside.

In the long term, it benefits clear thinking. The main benefit individually and culturally is this, it's the optimal cure for, and safeguard against, closed mindedness.

The panorama mode and broadband sensing interrupt the automatic repetition and re-confirmation of all abstract thoughts. Self-righteous opinions lose their generating energy, because they lose their automatic re-confirmation.

Common to All People of all Cultures

The panorama mode is a direct connection (it's more than a relationship) with the immediate environment. The senses are usually seen as the door between us and the world outside us. In a broadband reality our senses connect us with the world. The feeling is : we are the door.

Sensing the panorama in a broadband way, opens up another dimension of an individuals' relationship with the world, of feeling part of the whole.

It's reliable, easy and natural. Anyone of any culture could do it, whatever their focused beliefs. It's not a new religion, it's a vital part of the original ancient way of being. It's part of the human make up, a common denominator among all creatures and people of all cultures.

From a variety of perspectives, it is a fundamental unifying factor.

You Have A Choice
Chapter One continues with Mindfulness of Breathing and Smelling
Modern Cultural Repercussions Chapter 2
The Practical Way Chapters 3 and 4

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