Orion Caught Me
Orion Caught Me
I find that many of our weekly topics are often punctuated by examples that happen in real time. A kind of magical synchronicity that seems to be lessons coming from higher forces – higher worlds reaching down to lift me up. Today, I set out to put my thoughts together and write numerous times since 7:00 this morning and it is now 3:15 in the afternoon. What happened during those 8 hours of good intentions? Was I in imagination? (Surely, some of the time.) Perhaps my mind needed more time to marinate on this topic? Or were the activities that were an interruption from getting my writing done earlier a necessary part of the writing process? Is it sleep or is it higher states that feel an interruption?
It is clear to me that I need to change my attitudes in order to experience “interruptions” of my mechanical behavior in the second state of consciousness from feeling annoyed, to seeing and using interruptions as alarm clocks to wake me up into the third state, to refocus my energy into the present moment. Divided attention can be seen as a kind of advanced preparation designed to separate from disturbances that can derail me into imagination and identification which are often the precursors to the loss of energy by expressing negative emotions.
If I think of interruptions as interventions ― which is an intentional and deliberate effort to evoke and sustain presence ― I can redirect my energy toward the third state of consciousness. An example is when something bothers me – such as the tone of voice when someone spoke to me – it may be disturbing and I feel myself starting to flare up in negativity, but instead I am prepared to deliberately use divided attention, separate from the feeling of ‘I,’ maintain awareness and return to valuing presence over feeling justified with my negativity.
Another story that might illustrate how attitudes and the tool of divided attention can be used to value interruptions. This example shows more poignantly being interrupted from first state sleep into trying to evoke the third state in the middle of the night.
I had an elderly dog who had incontinence issues and needed to go to the backyard numerous times during the chilly winter nights. Not only was she incontinent, but she had slipped a disk in her spine and did not have proper use of her back legs. Each night when she would awaken, I would need to walk her outside in my robe holding her hips steady and helping her with her needs – usually she needed to go out two or three times. For several nights, each time my sleep was interrupted, I would be irritated at the circumstance of not getting a good night sleep.
Then one night, I looked up at the clear, beautiful starry sky and saw the constellation Orion. And as the winter progressed, so did the location of Orion. The constellation became a dear friend that I tiptoed out to greet, a marker and reminder of the celestial scale that accompanied my evenings.
You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight … ― Robert Frost
Through this experience I was able to change attitudes and look forward to awakening in the middle of the night, not just to help my dog, but to feel the pleasure of awakening from first state into the third state and feeling glad that circumstances I would not have chosen for myself had brought me into presence and into the awareness of Orion. Sometimes raising my state is as simple as looking up.
A billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head. But in you is the presence that will be, when all the stars are dead. ― Rainer Maria Rilke
Constellation Orion
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