Trying to Not Try

Can you think no thoughts? Can you look without seeing?

There’s a fine line between intention and surrender.

Hooked up to neuro feedback receptors on my brain, my goal was to make the DVD larger to fill out the frame. I wasn’t given any instructions as to how to do it.

I learned quickly that if I focused on trying to make the screen larger through thought alone, it would get smaller. If I paid attention to the film itself and followed the storyline, the screen would get larger–but not consistently.

What trigger with making the screen larger?

At one point I closed my eyes and tried to only watch the back of my eyelids. This actually seemed to work better (said the man in charge who was watching the live graphs and charts of my brain activity). How could not paying attention to what I was trying to do actually “succeed” more than when I was trying to do it?

The “goal” was to get the screen size to full-size and keep it there for 1.5 seconds. If I achieved that, I was rewarded with a point. Remember, I didn’t have any insurrections and didn’t know how to do it. I was supposed to learn by doing. It was almost impossible to keep the screen at full size for more than just a fraction of a second. It was frustrating … as well as intriguing.

Over a period of around 10 minutes, I was rewarded eight times. A good three of those with my eyes closed. So I wasn’t even watching the screen and I achieved the goal. In other words, I calmed my mind and tried not to try and I succeeded.

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My intention was to make the screen larger but I also needed to surrender my conscious mind to a state where it wasn’t trying but almost to a state of trusting that it was going to happen.

Like quicksand or floating on water: the more you move, the worse off you’ll be.

Lying on your back, trying to float on water. The harder you try, the more you move, the more you sink. Try to stay still, focus not on your body but the bigger picture. Focus on the entire lake and your body is just a part of the scene. There it is, floating on the water. Stay back, just observe. You can see it’s happening, you know it’s happening, but let it happen. Get out of the way.

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