A Marsha Summers Blog

[From Marsha…..long ago when the children were infants and toddlers, it took a lot to keep up with their needs and safety and also take care of cooking, cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping.  I just took care of what I could and learned to leave some things undone—sometimes for a long time.

Then a few years ago when I was job hunting, I saw the phrase ‘must be able to multitask’.  That sounded like a good thing at the time and something to develop to be more employable; although I later suspected that the employer wanted to be able to get more work from an employee to reduce the number of people who needed to be paid.

And I have begun to re-evaluate this multi-tasking idea with the teaching ideas of being in the present moment.  And so here is an excerpt that explains that a lot better than I can.]

Question from the audience:

(What’s the purpose if you’re only going to understand this moment—there’s no place to go and what would be the purpose?)

Because you’re thinking that without a future there is no purpose, right?

(What’s the purpose of getting into an automobile if you’re going somewhere if your only purpose is to see the present moment….and he goes on and on…………..)

My teacher says:

Suppose you got in the automobile; and you were only interested in getting to Provo.  So you had your attention strictly on what you were going to do when you got there?    Are you paying attention to your driving and the cars around you if you are thinking about what you are going to do there; or are you paying only a very small attention to the driving and a lot of attention to what you’re going to do in Provo.

(Either way.)

You’re attention is divided up—I’d rather not drive with you if you don’t mind because your attention is all split up; and you’re not paying very good attention to the highway.  What’s happening on the highway requires 100% of attention—changes can occur very quickly and the road become instantaneously dangerous.

(I doubt that would ever happen though.)

Is it possible that we want to look at things into the future, and we’re not willing to look at n0w?

When is it that you do something?

(Now.)

It’s always now.  If we do something now–this now is a fluid thing.  It’s not a disconnected spot.  And it’s possible, that if you live in present time that you would be far more efficient in each new direction rather than trying to live in many different places at the same time.  You mentioned a while ago about a limited attention span, and it, truly, is rather limited.  So, if you have your attention on Provo, on the highway, on something that went on yesterday and something that might happen next week, your attention is scattered until there is very little of it anywhere.

Now if it is all in the present moment without any struggle, this moment may be much fuller.  Every moment leads to another moment, right?  And if a person lived in present time, which is always now, they would find that their efficiency and memory steps up many hundreds of percentage points at once.

Of course most people’s minds is scattered in many places; and that’s why that statement you made that the attention span is limited is correct.

So consequently the attention is always bouncing from one of these things to another, isn’t it?  But it can be all one and in the present time.  The present moment is ever changing, so the attention would be very expanded over what it generally is—could that be possible?

So is it possible that living in the present moment might take care of all the other moments quite well?  When one is not living in the present moment at all, precious little attention is on the present moment–it’s on what will happen, what did happen, what he said, what she did, what I must or should do until there is very little attention paid to this moment.  So the sequence is in chaos.

This is a little story I told some time or other, and it’s a true one.  I went into a lady’s house one time and the kitchen was in a literal chaos–including her—she was perspiring and quite rattled.  The oven had black smoke billowing out of it—there was obviously something burning.  She had just dropped a head of lettuce on the floor and was chasing it, and the place was quite cluttered.  I asked my favorite question.

“What are you doing?”

She implied that I was a blankity-blank idiot for asking, but she said, “I’m trying to get dinner on the table.”  Her attention was getting dinner on the table—the end result.

A few days later I was in another home and the contrast was quite visible to me.  The lady was all dressed up and she had on a pretty little apron.  She was making salad—the oven was lighted and everything looked under control.  The little pots were sitting on burners bubbling away.  And so I asked my little question again.

“What are you doing?”

She said, “I’m cooking dinner.”

Now she was in present time, the other woman was out of time.  The other lady was trying to get to the conclusion without taking the logical step by step process as it comes along in daily living.

Now I’m sure that dinner got on the table in a much more enjoyable fashion in the second home and also much more efficiently because it was the logical outcome of what she was doing—she was living in the moment.  Each moment led to dinner on the table–and it looked like it would be a much more peaceful and joyful dinner in that house.

FYI, I have also put this Blog Entry on the EXCERPTS page.

It has come up in conversation that the two words sound like the same thing, and it sure seems that way.  What can help is finding the definitions for the words.

The teaching speaks of wanting non-disturbance.  We do and say things to GET non-disturbance.

So we have from “Illustrations” on the web site the 4 dual basic urges which are stated, basically, as:

On a Physical level to gain comfort and pleasure and escape pain or discomfort.

On a Mental level to gain attention and escape being ignored and rejected.

On an Emotional level to gain approval and escape disapproval.

And sometimes called Spiritual, sometimes Transcendental and sometimes “urge to power”,  to gain being needed or a feeling importance and escaping a feeling of inferiority or insignificance.

In “The Place of Language” peace is defined as an absence of competition.  I’ve also heard it defined as “not wanting to change anything”.  So if I’m peaceful it seems it is a “state of being” rather than trying to GET something.

I AM peaceful, but sometimes I go to sleep to seek non-disturbance.

Sometime when you want to drive yourself up the wall, sit down and try to figure this out.  Who all did the thing. What was the product made out of—we’ll say steel.  So somebody had to mine iron.  Somebody had to mine coal or coke.  Somebody had to mine other things, and they had to put a big furnace together.  The people that ran the furnace had to eat as well as all those other people doing the other things.  Somebody had to produce food.  Somebody had to produce shelter; and so we look … it seems that everybody is involved in the simplest things we have from a loaf of bread to the watch on your wrist to a piece of furniture or anything else that we may have or use.

I sat down and thought about a Vladimir Horowitz cassette tape I had.  I thought about his mother and father, his lessons, his teacher, his piano, the recording studio and all those people who did the recording.  Then it came to the items to make the tape and the travel to the store.  The store that sold it and the clerks.  The tape player I bought so I could hear it.  And I paid next to nothing to have the enjoyment of his playing.  What an exercise!

After many years, the website has finally had a facelift.  With the suggestion of having a blog, I was faced with the challenge of what I could do with this opportunity.

Ah, the first question could be:  “What is my purpose?”

As I have been transcribing even more of the tapes I have been blessed with, I oftentimes feel that much of what I hear has been covered adequately on the website; but there have been short excerpts that I find interesting and worthy of more discussion.

Though the teachings are for self study and stand on their own, and I have kept most personal reflections out of the website as much as possible, I see this as an opportunity for discussion.  As has been said, it can be a lonely path, particularly when there are no fellow students nearby.

So my purpose is to share those little gems that pass from the teachings into my inner being.  I also enjoy hearing other students talk about their applications of the teaching and what occurred—the result.  We all have little parables we can relate from our daily experiences, and some of the events and applications of the teachings have been big parables bringing forth major changes in our lives.

I hope to keep the entries short as, now, being legally blind, it is difficult for me to read long narratives.  I look forward to this new opportunity for expression, discussion, and of keeping the teachings vital and alive.