Working with desire is simple but not easy. It requires a diligent and consistent focus and the development of a consistent, inquiring ambient attention. What this looks like is having a sense of our true north.
Here, we sense effortlessness, depth, beauty, and being moved in the moment. We sense whether whatever is entering our consciousness will bring us closer to that sense of freedom or farther from it. This is not to be confused with the escape-seeking mind that is looking for mere relief.
Here, we are setting our compass to and through the liberation mind. Having made our decision, we use ambient attention to sense the options. Does the sensation of liberation increase or decrease when we project our mind into the next stroke? When the next stroke will be less sensational than the last, it is time to change the stroke. At any given moment, we are maintaining a steady stream of alive, open, and spacious sensation, using that as our guide and moving toward or away from phenomena based on how closely it matches up to this sensation.
If we continue to focus in this way, our programmed preferences will shift. What we think of as attractive or repulsive does not always match up with our internal sensory magnet. What we perceive to be our limitations are often constructs, not of our being but of our minds. It may be time to stop before we want to or it may be a place to continue when we would otherwise quit. But we are either in it or not; in this way, it is binary.
We build our entire consciousness around it in order to create an attention that is resilient, flexible, and subtle enough to remain with the content of this stream, regardless of the conditions of the mind or our environment. This is our refuge, and it requires eternal and vigilant maintenance.
