I'm unlugging this baby
I realized this morning that I had accidentally installed an “inner answering machine” that responds with a pre-recorded message to just about everything that happens in my life, but especially at work. It’s somewhat annoying.
I’ve been reading about the nature of awareness, and attention, and how the universe may in fact be “self aware.” (See Amrit Goswami, The Self Aware Universe, What the Bleep Do We Know, etc.) It has been pointed out that things rise up in awareness. Thoughts, objects, perceptions, feelings, sensations, the world itself— and work itself— all rise up and fall away in awareness. But awareness doesn’t rise and fall—is not an object. Awareness itself is still, ever-present, objectless, or thing-less, as it were.
Awareness itself is not a “thing,” not an object with neatly defined edges and textures. Edges and textures rise up in awareness, but awareness itself is edgeless, texture-less. (I’m not being airy-fairy here. I’m describing our common experience. Just take a look, see for yourself!)
Since awareness is “thing-less,” it is also timeless, since time needs things in order to exist. Awareness is always simply “right now.” Memories of the past rise up in awareness, and projections of the future rise up in awareness, but awareness itself is always only right now.
Enter the inner answering machine.
Seems like no matter what happens—no matter what rises up in my awareness, be it in my physical body, in my mind, or in the bird feeder outside the kitchen window—a little voice automatically switches on. The voice starts commenting on whatever it is that is arising— agreeing with it, disagreeing with it, welcoming it or rejecting it, basically “leaving a message.” This is especially true when I’m at work.
Yes, the voice, this inner monologue, this inner answering machine is also something that is rising up in awareness. Yet I observe that the voice is actually quite mechanical, “pre-recorded.” The message that the inner answering machine offers to whatever is arising—my supervisor’s jokes, my client’s woes, my overdue report—is most often based on memory, past conditioning, habit. Curiously, I notice that I am deeply habituated to identifying not with the awareness which is alive, radiant, alive and clear in every moment but rather with the stupid answering machine, the pre-recorded messages!
I now recognize that to simply “answer” the momentary call of work life— to most lovingly, intelligently relate to whatever is arising in awareness in this moment— it behooves me to unplug the inner answering machine. Like an old friend calling, I am free to “answer” life’s call— to see what’s new, what’s happening, what’s up— by simply being present, being aware (two words for the same thing-less thing).
Recognizing that there is in fact an “inner answering machine” is the first step in unplugging it. Awareness itself, attention itself, melts the plug. Unplugging the inner answering machine is Zen in the art of daily money grubbing.
I sense that when the answering machine is unplugged, my daily work no longer feels like money grubbing. It feels like life itself, calling my number, moment after moment, with more good news.
