Concentration-Attention

Adrienne: What are the two vessels, pouring from one vessel to another?

Sat: When you pour oil from one vessel to another, you have to concentrate and it has to be constant to fill the other pot. It is an example of saying that you have to really be one-pointed to have this stream go from one to the other. It is just an example.

Adrienne: Do we know which way the flow is? Is it a one-way flow?

Sat: It is really symbolic.

Adrienne: Or am I overthinking it?

Sat: I think there is that aspect of it (overthinking it), but what I get from that is to take the attention from the thoughts, feelings, whether it is bodily or emotional, etc. and descend it into the heart, descend it into the silence. When it is constant, it would be like the oil going from one vessel to the other.
Even when it is interrupted, at least you know where Home is and you can restart. The most important thing is that we know where our Home is now. It is not like we are confused in the jungle, feeling lost. When you are doing that, you are pouring the oil from one vessel to the other.

Aida: I think practicing keeps it a constant drip.

Sat: You can call it practice, you can call it shift of attention- whichever gives you less discipline [or] rigidity. That is because when we are taming the mind, rigidity, rules and regulations are not going to last very long. In some cases, it is very important; for example, I still get up really early and keep silence. That is what I do before the day starts, but that is not discipline, that is My way of life. I would rather do this than get involved with anything else. Again, we go back to the love, love takes the discipline out and replaces it by wanting to shift your attention from pain to peace. Who doesn’t want to do that? At times all of us (laughs). Now we have a choice.

Aida: For me I feel as though discipline feeds the beast.

Sat: Yes!

Mansour: One of the first corrections I received was that there should be no force. You saw the forcing that I was trying to do as far as my understanding was concerned regarding what concentration should be. I followed Your guidance to let it flow naturally.

Sat: Yes.

Mansour: I realized that what makes it flow is the love, that attention …

Sat: It’s the love.

Mansour: It wants to go back if you let it, if you don’t hold it- that was such an opening for me to understand that.

Sat: You know how when we have children, we know through the love that we show them [that] they hear us better, with tenderness, not harshness? They always get it better, hear it better. But most of us- I am talking about humanity, they don’t do the same thing for themselves, we are not gentle with ourselves.
On the spiritual path, we at least have to choose a teaching or a way that takes that burden of harshness away from us that we carried all our lives. Particularly when we come to the path of wisdom, we have already been a good person, we already did serve other people, we already were a good citizen, now it’s time that we learned how to be gentle because we are God, because we are no different, because God is everything.
All of us are sometimes harsh, including Me; we want perfection, but who wants perfection? The one that needs to go, to go Home. The entity that needs to go Home in the heart!

Kavi: I have a sharing that relates to these two bottles. Before I met You, I was very deeply anxious- to the point that I really couldn’t leave the house. I was very uncomfortable and unhappy in my own skin. There was only one vessel at that time, which was pain. But then when another one was introduced to me through these teachings, and the pouring went from the head to the heart, I put so much energy on it because I was so uncomfortable that I felt as though single-mindedness worked miracles for so long.

Sat: But now it is automatic, before when you wanted to get rid of the pain, you read more. It wasn’t like you forced it like Mansour did to bring it down. You read more, you listened more [to audios], you saturated yourself with love and wisdom, etc. and now you see that it is happening automatically. You don’t have to put as much effort as you did before, because you have tamed the mind to cooperate with you through the practices or the attention.

Adrienne: I have also been realizing that perfection is just a cruel mirage of your mind.

Sat: Yes, thank you!

Radha: And then there is the evil twin brother of perfection, which is judging yourself after being harsh for even wanting perfection (laughs). That one also needs to go Home.

Sat laughs and says: Thus, every thought is painful.

Question: What helps you persevere and not give up this concentration?

Sat: I also like to call “concentration” attention. Because concentration for Me has this feeling of will: “I have to concentrate.” When we tell our mind to concentrate, we actually get it off track. So, what is more natural is shifting the attention from pain to peace.
Again, I go back to the fact that in My own life, in the beginning of My journey, it required some discipline. But the discipline was out of love, like it is for all of us. But you get to the point that you leave the willpower behind, the concentration behind, the effort behind, even the search behind. Because this is not how we get to the state of being if we want to achieve our peace. All we have to do is remove the un-peacefulness! My experience has been that the most success in My life was when I relaxed, let the energy sink and be ok, and not to resist, grab and want to get to some sort of destiny.
When I leave Myself alone, “I am” perfect at that time, I am happy, etc. If we take anything in our practices, it would be to leave yourself alone. Then immediately you feel like you are, you just are. That has been My success- when I feel like I am just releasing and just being.

Farnaz: What do you mean by leave yourself alone?

Sat: All the judgment, all the stuff that is going on, even the good one that says. “You are doing better … you are succeeding.”

Farnaz: I was thinking of the value of all of this, how we never learned or heard it anywhere else to this depth and how You are taking all the burden and pressure off. There is no word to honestly describe how this is the worth of an entire lifetime. Do You know how much misery You have wiped out for us?

Sat: It is all grace, it is all grace of God, knowing our sincerity, when we have sincerity, we experience first hand very visible grace.

She then asks the group: Do we want to experience it?
-Everyone says an enthusiastic yes.

Sat: Alright, start pouring the oil into your heart, into your Home. If the flow of the oil stops, just bring your attention to it and it will restart it again.
-She remains silent as everyone meditates along with Her. After a few minutes, She says thank you and Namaste and ends the study circle.

Reno Center
Concentration-Attention
August 7, 2022