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somebody Junior Member Offline Afterlife Knowledge Member Posts: 53 Poland Gender:	Re: Focus Oct 12^th, 2005 at 2:41am hello, maybe try to stop for a while when you're exploring and "rest", try to concentrate at outward things. it helped me when i had similar problems with lucid dreaming. good luck!
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roger prettyman

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Re: Focus
Reply #1 - Oct 12^th, 2005 at 4:41am

Hi, White Feather,

One very good method I was taught is to hold your hands in the gasho (prayer) position with your fingers gently touching along their lengths, apart from the middle fingers where only the tips touch.
Close your eyes and focus upon the tips only of your middle fingers. When and if you find your mind wandering just bring your concentration back to the tips of these fingers. This should improve your powers of concentration, albeit it may take a little time - it works for me.

Best wishes, roger.

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The past is history, the future is a mystery.&&Today is a gift, that`s why it`s called the present.&&Let yourself enjoy today. It will never come again.&&&&&&Butterfly.

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LaffingRain

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Re: Focus
Reply #2 - Oct 12^th, 2005 at 11:25am

hi there. I am enjoying your picture. Wink

how is the PE coming? I have no big tips..but there is something I wish to try within exploration of all methods and ways of expanding the awareness...that is, when everything does seem fuzzy I am going to start saying CLARITY NOW! this advice from a guy name of Buhlman. love, alysia
ps. I'll let u know if it works!

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spooky2

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Re: Focus
Reply #3 - Oct 12^th, 2005 at 11:54am

Hi White Feather,
The Monroe Institute is teaching to imaginate a box where you put in everything which is disturbing your focus of awareness, and close the box after you had put it into it. You can do it everytime such thoughts occur.
In my sessions sometimes suddenly I am reminded of something important to do. I say "yes, but not now" and imagine to put it into a special place in which I store thoughts which I want to remember later.
Also, active imaginating is helpful because you have something to do then. For example, imaginated work with your body like energy gathering, imaginated walks/flights through your appartment or landscapes. If you register different states of meditation it might be helpful to associate a landscape or room with every of those states. Within this imaginated places the intended things might occur.
The clue is
--to identify quickly the thoughts which are not conform with the purpose of your meditation,
--to become distanced or liberated of those thoughts by putting them away ("not now", "in the box"),
--convince yourself that in this timeframe of meditation nothing is important but only the purpose you set up for yourself for this meditation and all what could serve this purpose.

I cannot recommend the "don't think"- method. For most people it's too difficult it seems. Instead, to notice thoughts and become able to keep it in distance and/or send it away works better for me.

But I'm afraid if you are really tired, no method will help but only resting, sleeping, dreaming, maybe combined with energy gathering exercises.

Spooky

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"I'm going where the pavement turns to sand"&&Neil Young, "Thrasher"

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Touching Souls Super Member Offline LOVE IS ALL, SHINE YOUR LIGHT THAT OTHERS MAY SEE Posts: 1966 Metaline Falls, WA Gender:	Re: Focus Reply #4 - Oct 12^th, 2005 at 5:23pm While meditating, let the thoughts come floating through and on out like clouds moving in the sky. After awhile, they won't come as often. It takes practice. Love, Mairlyn
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Tim Furneaux

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Re: Focus
Reply #5 - Oct 12^th, 2005 at 7:28pm

Hi White Feather, My suggestion for you is to use the immediate sensations of your body as the focal point. The idea is that you gently rest your attention on immediate sensations while deeply relaxing, especially relaxing the muscle of the brain. You let thoughts arise and go without interfering with them ( neither reaching out to them or pushing them away); like Mairlyn says, as if they're clouds momentarily floating across a sky. BUT you are the sky, you resting in the immediate awareness of the sensations of the body. Thoughts come and go, but you remain alert & spacious like the sky....Every once in a while you'll find you've boarded a thought-train and taken a ride away from resting in immediacy. When that happens, (without trying to comment about it too much in your head) just gently return your attention to the present moment, your present awareness of the senses... You can do this in dreams too, resting in the immediate sensations of your dream-body. From this vantage point you can notice this incredible silence between thoughts, between & underlying thoughts... relaxing into that silent gap 'tween thoughts is a great way to focus.... Hope this helps. boy do I wish you the best in this activity... Love, Tim

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Vicky YaBB Administrator Offline Afterlife Knowledge Member Posts: 2170 Colorado Gender:	Re: Focus Reply #6 - Oct 12^th, 2005 at 11:08pm These are good tips everyone. Thanks. I need to work on focus also so I'm glad to read this. Vicky
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Lucy

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Re: Focus
Reply #7 - Oct 13^th, 2005 at 6:15am

This is an interesting topic, and the one that comes after the discussion on imagination.

I'm not clear if some people use focus and intent interchangably; they seem different to me, but somehow they go together.

So imagination and intent are used in Bruce's technique...and some things you learn at TMI also?

But imagination and focus are also used in techniques of visualization used to create results the practitioner wants. [this is why getting confirmation of information is so important, you have no other way to distinguish wish from something a little more objective].

So in addition to my (un)usual problem of imagination, and working on that, I'm also working on focus. I think it is a much deeper topic than is being discussed above, but we don't really have a handle on that. Maybe it even holds a key to explaining why sometimes people seem to inadvertently manifest garbage in their lives...or be at earthquake zones when if given a concious choice they would have been elsewhere. So I think this is an important topic.

but, just as with the imagination thing, there are as many ways to imagine as their are individuals, there seem to be different ways to focus. Some are very quiet ways, as is the praying hands method above. I had a friend who was a student of ACIM after being a 7th Day Adventist (and that after being Greek Orthodox) who could sit very quietly and effectively in prayer. She did not understand a friend of hers who was black and who found much in the singing style of the black churches. I, on the other hand, think the singing and clapping and shouting does help some people to focus. I personally have had better results sometimes when I have just gone ahead and beat a pillow. So am I somehow different, denser, than the ones who can sit quietly in prayer?

Focusing intently is hard work, either way you do it. I'm wondering if one of the roles in sacrifice is to make people focus. Ritual killing would certainly make me look with intense feelings...that is a kind of focus.

Though I do think practicing the praying hands even just a little every day would in the long run be productive...why wait for a crisis and pray frantically. Certainly it must be something that needs to be prascticed daily...now there is a novel idea! I wish someone had said it to me years ago. Well actually someone did but I didn't get it...Gurdjieff taught an exercise...I learned it (well not from him directly!) as taking a pile of matches and moving them one at a time from pile 1 to pile 2 all the while focusing and thinking "match match match match..." I didn't understand what context that fit into and I found it sort of pointless at the time...my loss...

Maybe faith the size of a mustard seed is really just a kind of focus.

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Lucy Super Member Offline Posts: 1158 C1	Re: Focus Reply #8 - Oct 13^th, 2005 at 6:17am So what I'm relly thinking about this for is being able to focus on the crystal better.
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Tim Furneaux

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Re: Focus
Reply #9 - Oct 13^th, 2005 at 8:40am

It feels like real focus can't be forced, you can create the conditions for it's natural arising but it's not an act of will the way we normally think of will. For instance, if I put my attention on my body from head to toe (placing it there as if it's a substance) after a while there's a response from my body. Almost as if my attention is warming my body and the body responds with it's natural wisdom, it's already-present focus... It feels like 'focus' doesn't have to be created, it's more like something to be discovered/uncovered. It's already present.... Love, Tim

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LaffingRain

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Re: Focus
Reply #10 - Oct 13^th, 2005 at 9:32am

Lucy said: So am I somehow different, denser, than the ones who can sit quietly in prayer?
________

no, you're not denser, my pov, but you do seem more mental than the average bloke

which I actually admire. all this talk on focus and imagination got me thinking a bit, not of imagination, nor of intentions so much as just a few sublime spiritual moments of transcendance into just allowing myself to do something that seemed unlike myself. more on that later. with intent that manifests, not that I'm an expert, but I have noticed a delay between setting the intent and the manifestation of it. so in the delay period which may be weeks or days, we practice that faith idea, but in truth that delay period may be more important than we can understand..we may even be building the intent stronger during the faith period. this is my guessitmate.
got off track again..due to the tendency of the written word to fail to produce the entire rote!!! dang!!! why did I choose this path? ha! I'm mental too Lucy, but back to intention setting, the best intentions for me that have manifested got imported with the emotional content around the mental construct. these two items got shuffled over into the closet of the subconscious, so that when they manifested, it all seemed quite subjective experience and surprising..just until I remembered how strongly I had placed the intention, backing it up with emotional theatrics sometimes.
another way of saying this is moving myself. or how "bad" you want a thing, or to know a thing. the objective. it's like that organization called MADD, or mothers against drunk drivers...you can bet there are some mad moms who lost their kids..a very potent force for society changes is working in that idea of going after something you want within intent. a strong feeling of gratitude can back up intent also, as I would surf out to express this sometimes within obe, not knowing just the gratitude was taking me there without the intent.
so I would say there is a formula or maybe we can make our own formulas? intent+emotion=self expression=manifestation? or is this already been said? probably. I have been accused of plegarism but I took it as a compliment rightly so. Grin

Spiritual One-ness Experiences:
theres was this black lady I fell in love with in New Orleans while I was out there for my first look at the place where singing in the street and voo doo went hand in hand. I wore a long dress so I could feel like a lady of leisure traveling through observing humanity, instead of the farm hick I really was. my daughter drove me around as I was incapable of driving and obsorbing all this culture at the same time. this beautiful soul lit my smoldering fires within my own soul as she belted out a phrase over and over 'ASK HIM! ASK HIM! JUS' TELLEM WHATUWANT! (Jesus or God, not sure which) I stopped in front of her with the intention of drawing a crowd around her, to celebrate her beauty of self expression. I started clapping and I let my feet move a little in dance for she had some backup. other people started to notice and soon we had a crowd. she looked up surprised a little, she was drawing support. 3 of us, her backup included shared a secret smile we were all one spirit, and we knew, all we had to do was ask and we would get what we want. she started singing stronger now..I thought I would blast through my skull and fly away it was so much fun loving her. she wasn't mental like me, but in the words of the song she had chosen was a great truth which made us one, for I realized I could ask my very own soul for what I wanted, and she could ask Jesus, but it was all the same spirit of the human soul reaching for truth. I walked away knowing I had just made her day, but mine too, as I wasn't a hick, or a lady of leisure, I was just a human like her.

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blink Ex Member	Re: Focus Reply #11 - Oct 13^th, 2005 at 9:42am White Feather, ...just allow, no force... you can take your "whole self" "out there" or "in there" -- however you wish to view it -- with a specific intention but can let the "weight" of the self fall away of its own accord...with practice... love, blink
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