two attentions

Today I'd like to outline our two attentions, two minds, two ways of perceiving reality.
Are there more than two? Yes. Exploring these two will open the doors for exploring others.

There are many names for these two attentions. I'll touch on several of them to give you multiple angles
of perception and understanding.

As you are reading this post, one of your two minds is going to digest it.
It's like someone made a batch of soup and you've never tasted it before...
Do you ask what's in it, or do you just taste it?
These are the two minds. In a nutshell:
One wants to understand before/in order to experience.
The other wants to experience before/in order to understand.

The attention that wants to comprehend, grasp, understand... is also called the mind, in that it has no
tangible reality. It is lunar, mind, mens, imagination. It is based on knowledge and knowledge is the
known, the past. When you build reality based on the mind, it is called Saturn.

This attention is also the idea of oneself as the illusory ego, knowledge, past, mind.
When the mind is based on what is real, the present, it is called Jupiter.

Notice the qualities and correspondences of the two.
Saturn is black, dense, contraction while Jupiter is associated with white or sky blue, the air and sky,
and expansion.

Here is another way of relating the cross of matter to the lunar crescent of mind - the anchor and the trident:

The anchor weighs us down (saturn), keeps us fixed while the trident is the reverse - freeing one from
old ways and seeing things anew, as represented by Siva, the destroyer.

Let's observe another system's use of these attentions...
In the Kabbalah, we see two glyphs or autiot, one representing the open, creative hand (Yod - 10),
and the other the closed or grasping hand (Kaf - 20).
Yod is related numerically as an extension of Aleph - 1, and unfolds into Qof - 100.
Aleph is the Ox, the creative force, and Qof is the back of the head, that is, the seat of the Subconscious,
the cerebellum.

In contrast, Kaf - 20, the grasping hand, is an extension of Bet - 2, a house, dwelling or container, and
Resh - 200, is the head or face, the frontal lobe, seat of the personality.

So we can make the connection between the subconscious, open, creative hand with Jupiter/expansion,
and the personality, closed, grasping hand with Saturn/contraction.

The closed hand that wants to "grasp" or "comprehend" wants to know reality through knowledge, the past,
or by dissecting it, separation. It is like the Zen saying where the guy comes to learn with a cup already full.
The grasping/closed hand is already full of knowledge. It will pollute the present with that knowledge.
The open Jupiter/expansion creative hand is empty, ready to receive the present as a true "present"/gift.

Luke 5:37
"And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins."


Let's take a look at what Castaneda had to say about the two attentions...
I'll paraphrase or give my own summary in order to save space:

The first attention: ordinary awareness, the assemblage point fixed to its habitual position, the tonal,
the known, reason, the attention trained to perceive and interpret infinity as the mundane physical  world.

The second attention: extraordinary (heightened) awareness, the assemblage point shifted or moved to
assemble new, unknown emanations/frequencies as realities, the Nagual, the unknown, the attention
re-trained to be fluid, open-minded, to receive the unknown instead of project the known.

I just came across this relative quote:

"You must let go of your desire to cling. The very same thing happened to me. I held on to things, such as the food I liked, the mountains where I lived, the people I used to enjoy talking to. But most of all I clung to the desire to be liked. Those things are our barriers to losing our human form. Our attention is trained to focus doggedly. That is the way we maintain the world. Now is the time to let go of all that. In order to lose your human form you should let go of all that ballast."


Notice the terms "cling" (grasping hand) and "ballast" (the Saturnian anchor).
When we turn that anchor upside-down we have an umbrella (Latin umbra = shadow) or a parasol (beyond
the sun).  We also have a mushroom which is a doorway to the second attention.


There is a latin phrase familiar to Theosophists: "Demon est Deus Inversus"
Demon = devil = satan = Saturn
Deus = Dieu = Dieu Pater = Jupiter


But in alchemical terms, the seed of Gold lies in Saturn; or the alchemist transmutes lead into gold.
What is this transmutation? Inversus. Turn it upside-down and let nature/gravity do its thing.

From William Blake's "The First Book of Urizen"
Does this not suggest "turn your reason (Urizen) upside-down"?


Bhagavad Gita, chapter 6, verse 5:

"A man must elevate himself by his own mind, not degrade himself. The mind is the friend of the conditioned soul, and his enemy as well.
For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his very mind will be the greatest enemy."



Finally, my personal view on these two modes of perception is to call them past-now and future-now.


The past-now (Saturn) is the way we perceive this moment through the dirty filter of the past/knowledge.
In this mode, we are only able to re-assemble items/images of the past which we project onto the present.
It is an active mode - we are doing something - trying to "create" better than God/what is.


The future-now (Jupiter) is an expansive and receptive mode. We receive the future instead of projecting
the past. We receive the unknown, because we are not using our knowledge/reason.


To create and control takes effort and stress. And guess what - you're going to receive whatever comes
anyway. So why not relax and receive the moment. Simply observe what stress/grasping does to your 
body compared to relaxation/receiving. You can row your boat all you like, or let the current take you.


The same has been observed about breathing: Do you take a breath, or do you receive a breath?


In reference to the "Inversus" and the mind being a friend or enemy, you can see that one
can set oneself up against the flow of the future now, thus perceiving god as satan/adversary.
When we try to control through the past now, obstacles are often thrown in our way.
(Diabolos = to throw between) Is it a stumbling block or a stepping stone? Do you see shit 
or flowers? (do you flow, or row against?) Lead or gold?




In this blog, we have only looked at the relationship between mind/moon and matter/cross.
What do you think is the difference when substituting the sun for the moon?