Single Pointedness

"If your eye be single your whole body will be full of light"
​- Jesus

​So many people now are having glimpses of peace yet often have periods throughout the day when they feel that peace is gone. It seems to be here one moment and gone the next and this back and forth and in and out can be very confusing for a time.

For me, after the initial glimpse of peace, there was a lot of forgetfulness. I would know and sense wholeness and then in the next moment be in the fog of stress and negativity. There would be the clarity of peace and then the confusion of conditioning. But somehow even in all of that in and out of clarity whenever I felt peace to be gone, rather than assume that to be true - I ‘looked’ directly.  Again and again and again and again. For quite some time, this was my sole purpose. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep, whenever I remembered – the sensing or confirming of what is true now was where my attention was.

But there was a moment when I was very close to being distracted from that single pointed looking or inquiry .... 

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​I was with some friends and one began talking about how significant learning about ‘totem animals’ – animals that keep showing up in our lives - has been for her. Another shared how just recently she began to see foxes in her yard or along the roadside while driving and a third talked about what different animals symbolize and then recommended a book to read that she was finding very helpful.

My thoughts went to the family of robins that surprisingly made a nest in a low lying bush right outside my back door and I felt myself being pulled into wanting to explore this subject further. I wondered about what robins symbolized and how knowing that may somehow help me. I asked for the title of the book again so I could write it down and the first thing I did when I got home was to go to the computer to order it. After all, the information I learn could be helpful, I thought – at any rate, it can’t be harmful.

After typing in what I needed to buy the book I was just about to hit enter and an inner voice stunned me into pausing. Quietly yet powerfully the question, “Is this what you really want?” came to me. As I looked up from the computer I began to seriously consider what it is that I do want.

And when I considered what I do want I had to admit that I wanted to stabilize in the understanding and sensing of what is true now. And I also had to admit that learning anything new, regardless of how interesting or even helpful it may be on a certain level – that that accumulated knowledge would not be of any help in the knowing/sensing of what is already now.  If I truly wanted to stabilize in the understanding of what is now that then meant nothing new at all needed to be learned.

Distractions may happen, side paths may be taken, but without any judgment it is very helpful to see them as that.  It’s not that distractions are actually wrong in some way – but only that they are distractions from what is already now. And when we see them as distractions we then have the clarity to see and choose what is not a distraction.  

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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