Last night, Sunday night, while at my home, I was having a difficult time working on myself; being present to myself and to my external environment.  I was seated by my computer table, working on some physics problems for a physics class that my older son was taking.  However, at the same time, my computer was turned on, connected to the Internet, and in the next room, my younger son was alternating between watching a football game and a baseball game.  And, despite my wish to not to, I was drawn into these games on TV.  It just seemed that there was no attention in me, nothing of substance.  And I had this attitude that I could not work on myself anymore, that the work was slipping away, and that there was nothing I could do about it.

But somehow, a thought came in and it said to try to draw some pictures.  When I was young, in my teens and in my early 20's, I used to draw pictures (as well as some painting).  But I haven't really drawn much these days and I haven't painted since then.  But when this thought came, I immediately took it up and started to draw.  Using my clipboard, I began to draw a picture of a swivel chair which was located not too far from where I was seated.  And with this task of drawing, I could feel my attention returning.  And it seemed to balance the attention that was being drawn out of me, such as from the excitement of the sports on TV.  I just felt more balanced.  And when I continued to draw a picture of this chair, I felt a relationship with this chair.  It wasn't just an object but something perhaps sacred.  And its form, such as its legs touching the ground through its rollers, was fascinating.  Strange but when I was drawing the chair, I felt a connection and I seemed more sensitive to it.  And my hand strokes became more refined and felt actually pleasurable and not really an effort.  It seemed like my hand knew what to do.  And I felt more alive or rather I felt alive.  Before this, I felt like my life was being sucked out of me.

I am currently sitting in a large room, filled with people, who are here, like me, for jury duty.  And I have brought my laptop computer with me so that I can spend my time more productively, hopefully, utilizing my mind, instead of being bored or being occupied with things like reading a newspaper or books (or surfing the Internet) like so many people here.  I don't know the relationship between myself and the GIG Blog and the possible readers out there.  I feel a certain responsibility to maintain my blog and to write into it, once in a while.  And I want to say that having this blog on the Internet (as compared to writing something just for myself and for my own viewing) is providing me something , something like a third force, I suppose.

And so, with this introduction of where I am (externally and internally) right now, out of the way, I would like to talk about this idea of having fun.  Of course, this idea has to be considered in the context of being in good householder, that is, I must make sure to take care of things in my life that need to be taken care of.  But after that, when I have free time and even when I am doing these things, I can enjoy myself and have fun.  What does it mean to have fun?  I would say it would be utilizing my creativity such as to see things in a new way or to see things that I have not noticed before.  I think it would mean to have a sense of freedom, a sense that I am not stuck in a rut, that I can do things like move around or walk (such as if I were at my job or in a jury assembly room).  And along with that, I think it would mean not to feel victimized, to feel that I have no choice, to feel that I am stuck, helpless, and so forth.

And so, it seems to me the main aspect of having fun (that I can think of now) is my attitude.  I would like to have an attitude that I have some control over my life (even if it is not much), that I can do some things.  And also, it is to appreciate these small things that I can do, such as in typing into this blog right now, because they could be an indicator of something bigger, such as, by typing into the blog right now, I feel more alive, I feel more confident of myself, and I have more energy.

I would like to revisit this idea of having a choice which I wrote a few months back. And instead of re-inventing the wheel, as the saying goes, I would like to cover some things that have not yet been mentioned related to this idea of having a choice. To me, this idea is related to another idea (or the task) about keeping the inner work fresh, of keeping it alive in me. An idea, in order for it to be useful, must mean something more than just thoughts in me. It needs to point to something else, something deeper.

What does it mean to have a choice? It means being open to my world, both the external and the internal. It means to have an attitude of appreciating these things so that nothing is rejected because otherwise, I am closed off to them, because otherwise, I react to them, I am identified with them. But at the same time, it is knowing what things or impressions are useful and what are not, what things I can go with or decide to choose to follow, such as in sensing my body.

But why not simply empty the mind, to have an inner silence? I think that there is inner silence that arises naturally while engaged in the inner work. However, I notice that there is a tendency in me to use the tool of stopping thoughts to try to stop the thoughts, music playing, feelings, desires, impulses, things that annoy or irritate me. But that seems to be in the realm of reacting. Perhaps it is necessary to try to stop these things. And then perhaps it is necessary to separate from this activity; to use it as an alarm clock. Things can get complicated. But what I would like to emphasize is the attitude of acceptance or that of appreciation; simply accepting what is without wanting to change anything in myself. And what helps me is to make the inner work fun, to keep it alive, to keep it fresh.

This is a topic that I have been thinking about, once in a while, for some time now. I remember I saw, many years ago, a TV commercial for a tire company where the phrase, stopping on a dime, was used. And I would like to explore the usage of this term, in relation to the inner work on myself.

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I have been thinking lately about this idea that the inner work is not something precise.   Such as, typically, I might set an aim to sense my hands or my feet (along with other aims) a few times throughout the day.  But, as often happens, something else appears such as music playing in my head or some other distractions like some thoughts or some feelings or some bodily movements or impulses.  And I think this is the crux of the matter, in terms of what I find when I try to work on myself; the distractions and my apparent inability to keep aims.  In other words, I find myself in life, engaged in life.  So what do I do, in these all-too-common situations?

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I am going to write about a topic, that of boredom, that is rather ordinary but I think something that is important nevertheless.  And actually I feel bored right now and so, it is a good time to write about it; to write about it, on the spot, sort of speak.  And, oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, I feel a certain excitement or enthusiasm, enter into me, as I write about the topic of boredom, but I'll try to describe it and its significance, in terms of my work on myself.

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What does it mean to be a human being?  What does it mean to feel what we experience on a daily basis as well as on special occasions such as one's marriage, birth of one's children, one's graduation, and so forth?  But mostly, what I would like to know is what it means to experience the same feelings over and over again on a daily basis for seemingly forever and ever; to have the same reactions over and over again to the same circumstances in my life or to the same manifestations in me.  Does it mean anything?  Or is it just noise that signifies nothing?  Do these repeated experiences mean anything?  Or do even the special circumstances like that of one's marriage mean anything?

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I would like to talk about the "business" aspect of this blog writing before I get into the main topic.  I had set an informal aim with myself to post a blog at this website at least once per week and I see that I haven't kept that aim recently.  Anyway, I'll try to keep to that aim, as much as possible, in the future.  Also, I have written materials in the past that I intended to make public but somehow, I can't seem to finish these materials when I get to them later on.  And so, it appears that the only time that I can actually post something is right then and there, in that specific time, like now.  And the reason I think that I can't return to the topics that I left off earlier is that I am constantly changing and what interested me before or what I was "working" on before does not interest me later on.  And I expect that the readers will find that to be the case as well in the sense that some ideas and experiences written here will make sense and some others will not.  And so, all of us are changing.  Or, as Mr. Gurdjieff might say, there is a change of "I".

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What is attention?  This is a huge subject for discussion and I would like to examine it, not systematically, but just like with other topics that I have posted, somewhat informally - to take advantage of the nature and the structure of the blog which allows for this freedom and flexibility.  And, with other topics, one of my purposes in writing (as an external aim) is not to result in answers but perhaps to raise questions by probing the subject along a certain line of thought.  Also, I would like to say that I don't know what attention actually is.  I can try to describe its characteristics and that will get the ball rolling, in examining it further.

Attention requires an object, or at least, for me, that is how I know that I have attention in that moment.  Such as, I set an aim to pay attention to my hands, right now.  That is, I don't know what attention is but I know that if I notice the sensation of my hands, then I know that I have attention, for that time being.  And mostly, through my past experiences, I know that I don't have attention because I can't keep my aim; that is, my attention wanders or wavers.  I get distracted easily.

And perhaps the most important aspect of having attention is that it leads me back to my "self."  Such as, when I sense my hands, for example, sometimes, this effort of paying attention leads to the source of that which is paying the attention, to the witness or to my "self."  To who I am.  And that is what is referred to as divided attention in the book, In Search of the Miraculous.  And one of my friends has stated it as, the attention is the fuel and the consciousness is the light.

I would like to say before I talk about this topic that I feel fortunate to have concepts like the inner octave available to me and that I don't really know much about it but I will try my best to talk about it.  This idea like other ideas, as mentioned in a book like In Search of the Miraculous, is like a pointer, pointing in a certain direction, and not really intended to result in an answer.

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