a theatre near you

What do we see? Is it scary? Is it lonely? Is it joyful? Are we angry? Are we lonely? Are we joyful? Are we nostalgic? Are we fearful? Are we expectant? Are we in wonder? What is this life that’s passing us by, passing through us, passing on the screen of the eyes behind our eyes?

What are we focusing on right now and how do the lights up there on that screen make us feel? Can we shift our focus to something that makes us feel worse? Just to see how that works, just to see how that feels? Can we shift our focus to something that feels better - just to know that we can, if we so choose? If we can’t seem to entirely shift our focus, if we believe we’re too fascinated with one part of the show to the exclusion of others, can we perhaps focus on just a small aspect of that part of our focus? Perhaps we can then notice how that tiny leverage, that tiny shift, that difference, that nuance, however minute, even infinitesimal makes us feel…

Two people watching a movie never experience it the same way, and no one person ever sees the same movie twice, lives the same emotion twice, has the same experience twice, is the same person even once. So as we look closer at looking itself, it might be revealed that there’s no movie at all, no solid experience as such, nothing at all down there - just our response to our response to our response…

So now we notice more and more that as we shift the music of our response by shifting our so called focus, the tonality of our so called life, the emotional color of our so called, so felt, so believed in world reinvents itself – simultaneously, invisibly. Trickster, this life seems to shift so seamlessly, it reincarnates as though it had always been so, right now, forever -solid and true. Even as we see through this and we come to experience our experience as nothing more, nothing less than our response to experience - why do we still often feel trapped, stuck, confused about confusion – stuck in the content, feeling bad about feeling bad? Why does it seem so hard to feel good?  May I ask it very simply? Someone, something deep down, high up, front and center,  please give us a hint about a clue to an intuition, however minute, even infinitesimal, a tiny whisper in our ear in answer to the question –

“How do we make life feel good?”

We believe that we believe that it’s difficult – hard work to change.  We believe we know who we are and we are what we know what we believe. As though belief is a thing and it is solid. As though our life is a thing, our self is a thing and it is solid and we know what it is, and we know what we know what we know. Yet the slightest shift in the movie can make us respond powerfully, shift our mood powerfully. Perhaps, if we become aware how our focus appears as belief, how what we believe about our focus feeds itself again and again as the very music of how we feel right now, we might let go of our interest in the content of our belief, and we might find our focus going to focus itself… and how it feels.  Believing that shifting our focus is difficult and laborious feels a certain way. Believing that shifting our focus is effortless, creative and fun feels a certain way, and we might feel it right now, reading this.

What do we believe about this movie, and how does it feel? Do we want to experience pain right now or pleasure?                 

What is the most pleasurable belief we can have about pleasure right now? I’m going to ask myself this very question, right now.  Together, let’s ask this, just to see how we feel, in this moment, right now, even as we begin to ask…