Hridaya, The Spritual Heart -- Open Attention

The Open Attention

a) The Significance of the Open Attention
The open attention is the natural expression of a consciousness which is not preoccupied with achieving a thing or another. It is an impersonal attention, free of attachments, the attention of the witness consciousness. Therefore, it does not lose itself in the knowing of the object, but it maintains an awareness of the Spiritual Heart, of the source of attention itself. The traditional texts about yoga include numerous references to the open attention.

a) The Significance of the Open Attention
b) How to Achieve the Open Attention
c) The Open Attention Increases the Sharpness of our Perceptions
d) Sensations Go Back to Source
e) The Limitations of Transformation by Doing “Energy Work”
f) What is to Do Next?
g) The Attitude of Open Attention Improves and Refines the Benefits of hatha yoga
h) The “Sensitivity” to the Spiritual Heart

b) How to Achieve the Open Attention

We remain focused on perceiving any sensation or impression which appears in the body, or in the environment and, at the same time, we maintain the state of Witness Consciousness or, in other words, being in a state of observation full of love, free of the need to analyze, label or conceptualize. (It is a perception of the oneness in which everything that can be seen, felt, etc. is not separated and individualized. It is a type of the contemplation of the oneness, an out of focus or panoramic "view”, which embraces and encompasses the wholeness, the reality.)

c) The Open Attention Increases the Sharpness of our Perceptions

The accuracy and the quality of perceptions change by virtue of the simple fact that our attention is directed towards them effortlessly (without strains or expectations). In this state, there are no preconceptions and no desire to push the energy or to direct it anywhere. We let it follow its own free path. The Open Attention, free from the ego based tensions caused by the pursuit of various goals, is spontaneously quieting the racing thoughts.
Our perception becomes perfectly clear, because there are no more thoughts to label it. We now relate to any experience in an intimate way, without prejudices and expectations. Because of the intimacy of the experience itself, we get to move more easily from the level of mental analysis to the level of pure and free existence. And, at that point, the sensation dissolves into the spring of life that we really are, the life that animates us.

d) Sensations Go Back to Source

When we stop labeling and looking for meaning in sensations, we stop setting limits to them and then they tend to go back to the source vibration, the Spanda which is the origin and the terminal stop of any sensation. The spiritual aspiration and our opening up to the Sacred Tremor can be achieved in any moment of awareness during our life. This attitude can be more easily learned by meditating and by practicing hatha yoga.
Charged by the Sacred Tremor with a transfigurative vibration, we perceive the body as transparent, transfigured (and, in a way, he does become as such).
The body becomes a doorway to a deeper reality revealed beyond the changes and appearances of various sensations and concepts.

e) The Limitations of Transformation by Doing “Energy Work”

The experience of opening up freely brings in a new attitude: we perceive or have access to energies, sensations and states which are no longer in need of change, transformation or energizing etc. No matter how beneficial could be the changes we might envision, they are still ego based, because the changes would take place only at the level of the individual consciousness.

f) What is to Do Next?

We learn more about the role of the Witness Consciousness and the Open Attention.
The sphere of the open attention does not include only our energies and sensations, but the way we react to them as well.
What do we think about that experience or energy? Whether we like it or not, whether we think we should amplify it or not, whether we should transmute it, etc, etc., the reality is that these questions are only false projections of the individual consciousness and they lead us only to a state which lacks intimacy regarding that particular energy or sensation. The desire to control it implies separation from it and, implicitly, a separation from the very energy of life, the source of life force which animates our being.

The Spiritual Practice, whether it is practice of asanas or of meditation, will always express intimacy with what it is, with the present moment, with the silence of the Spiritual Heart.
It is a state of intimacy with the deep silence of the Spiritual Heart. In this state we stop comparing what there is with what there should be and we stop trying to make it better or right. This is the Open Attention.

g) The Attitude of Open Attention Improves and Refines the Benefits of hatha yoga

Dwelling in the state of the Open Attention towards the body during the practice of asanas, we can adjust our practice and attitude based on our body’s needs: relaxation or activity, certain type of bending or certain energy.
We let our body’s inner wisdom guide us and, thus, by awareness, we develop the direct knowledge, jnana or gnosis.

h) The “Sensitivity” to the Spiritual Heart

In hatha yoga this type of sensitivity or, in other words, the way we consciously open up to the inner energies and phenomena, is fully controlled. And, evidently, this is not sensitivity in the common sense of the word. The ordinary sensitivity does not concern a particular object or range of perceptions such as the sensitivity to sounds or colors, etc. In this case, it is a type of sensitivity towards the Spiritual Heart, the Sacred Tremor, the Spanda while there is an attitude of openness to love, to the fundamental rhythms of the cosmos, to the vibration of Divine Grace and of the Pure Bliss.

This is how we learn how to open up, to honor and to give back love to the whole Creation.

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