"Open Focus" - Dzogchen style, natural ease from psychology.

Hey guys!

I thought some of you might be interested in psychology's descovery of the use of attention for awakening to ease and happiness - the natural state - just the practice without the presuppositions - without the metaphysics.

Check out the link.

www.wisdompage.com/aboutopenfocus.html

www.wisdompage.com/FehmiBook.html

In kind regards,

Adam. Edited for typo; and added link.

I've met Les Fehmi, and received the Open Focus training. I highly recommend it.

In fact, I referred to it earlier in another thread.

Choyofaque
D

Hey David!

Oh, great to hear. I wonder if you would post a link to your said reference in-thread. Also, if you know of any online literature descussing and describing the the open focus material and techniches (other than the open focus site itself), please do post links to those also!

Any impressions on the good doctor himself, and further thoughts about open focus?

Thanks Dave!

In kind regards,

Adam.

Found it Dave. It's a very brief reference in the recent Impermanence thread. Thanks mate.

Thanks Adam and David. It also sounds very similar to Silent Illumination as described by Sheng-yen:

books.google.ch/books?id=tSKb00ZgtiYC&pg...v=onepage&q=&f=false

Hey Alex!

I've been listening to his free introductory talks on the theory and practice, and I'm really very impressed. Yes, it does seem very much like Silent Illumination and Dzogchen Trekcho.

openfocus.com/Complimentary.html

He suggests this open, diffuse focus or attention of awareness on 'all' stimuli and the 'space' and silence that all experience takes place in, is our natural attentional state that naturally leads to homeostatus, healing, wellbeing and happiness. He states that we can observe this in babies, and also animals, which spend much of their time in this diffuse, at ease, state of open attention i.e. dogs and cats just sitting around being aware of what is, in this kind of relaxed, aware, meditative state.

Very interesting!

I'll try to find out more - I've got order forms for this at my office.

Dr. Fehmi is one of the pioneer researchers on meditation and neurofeedback.

I don't think it's exactly equivalent to Dzogchen - but clearly similar and Dzogchen contains components of this training. I've hypothesized that there is a cognitive skills component to enlightenment, and this is the very attention training I was thinking of. If you wind up getting the tapes, there's a lot of stuff like "Can you imagine... the space between your ears?" Apparently this spatial visualization was what most robustly produced alpha waves in the lab - goes along a little bit with my theory that enlightenment involves integrating right hemispheric cognitive processes.

David

Hey guys!

I bought Les' MP3 downloads. I'll report back to this thread in a few weeks and let you know the results of this exploration. My sense so far is when we are able to naturally allow our awareness to be naturally as it is here and now in a loose, open awareness of what is without intention or purpose, this is when we are most optimally able to notice our fundamental nature as it is here and now. The exercises for getting there may be contrived, but then most of us have a life time attentional rigidity to loosen.

Intriguing. I'm interested in psychology's contribution, as spiritual stories are just as much a contrivance as any other...

In kind regards,

Adam.

"Hey guys!

I bought Les' MP3 downloads. I'll report back to this thread in a few weeks and let you know the results of this exploration. My sense so far is when we are able to naturally allow our awareness to be naturally as it is here and now in a loose, open awareness of what is without intention or purpose, this is when we are most optimally able to notice our fundamental nature as it is here and now. The exercises for getting there may be contrived, but then most of us have a life time attentional rigidity to loosen.

Intriguing. I'm interested in psychology's contribution, as spiritual stories are just as much a contrivance as any other...

In kind regards,

Adam."

Hey Adam,

Any feedback on this yet? Do you think it's helped at all?

D

"He states that we can observe this in babies, and also animals, which spend much of their time in this diffuse, at ease, state of open attention i.e. dogs and cats just sitting around being aware of what is, in this kind of relaxed, aware, meditative state.
"

that is very interesting indeed, if animals and babies do spend much of their time in that state.
I'm reminded of the opening scene of the docufilm Baraka with the monkeys sitting in the hot springs, just 'being'.

although.. the skeptical side of me has to point out that simply because animals do it doesn't mean that it's right
as they are far from liberated. such a view is no doubt prevalent in Taoism though.. where the
way of the natural is held to be the good. of course there's no way to tell what's going on in the mind of an animal,
but the Buddhist view makes more sense to me, they are suffering just like us.
This no doubt does not mean that we cannot learn from other beings. just have to remember that they are in samsara too!

sorry for the offtopic!

(btw this thread is loading strangely for me, the frames are very wide and I have to keep scrolling to the right to see the end of every sentence
so I tried to shorten my post to a smaller width. it probably looks weird if I'm the only one having the problem lol)