The Listening Attention

The Listening Attention

  • The Gumb

    “It is absolutely essential that we actually get in touch with the eternal Child.”  

    – William Samuel

         I’ve found dreams to be a valuable source of self-knowledge through the years, and a great trick to get around the ego’s ruthless tactic of editing out anything truly useful in our search. The following dream is no exception. I was in isolation, a spiritual retreat, and had a curious dream. I wrote it down, and later, when back from the retreat, took the time to research the information. Even now the dream stands out, for it describes a fundamental aspect of us all, one that I continually find described by others in their own words, too.

         The dream revolved around a character called the ‘gumb’. This term was accepted by me, as witness to the dream, being part and parcel to the world the dream presented. Only later in so-called waking life did I find the term curious. The character it described was an ordinary sort of fellow, of average height, build, and appearance, but his manner was most unusual. I was shown a series of vignettes where these characteristics were illustrated, as the dream narrator filled in the details.

         In the first scene, the gumb was attacked with spears by a swarm of meanies. Being outnumbered and with no visible means of defense, I was flabbergasted at the result. He was able to simply wave off the spears, and continue on his way unharmed. Next, his bug-like adversaries built a series of walls from cement blocks in attempts to hem him in.  Again, he simply waved his way through, never breaking stride. He never lost his cool or reacted emotionally in any way to these situations. He didn’t indulge in having his feelings hurt or stop to place blame, he just kept moving. He did not attack or retreat but held to his way, without hurry or delay.

         While I watched in amazement, the narrator filled in the story. He told me the man was called the gumb. The reason he could not be hurt or stopped was because he did not carry a watch, and was not afraid to gamble. I remembered these words, and later, back in the world of organized information, I wrote them down and began the search for this word ‘gumb’.

         While later on I found several different versions and roots of the word, the initial search was by far the most informative, and I believe, the most accurate. It resolved the dream for me. I found the word ‘gump’ in a large dictionary, and was surprised at the result. The word was Scottish in origin, and originally meant fishing in the dark, to search for with the hands, to grope and catch fish under banks or stones. It was said it later came to mean searching for insights, having no fear, and not being overly concerned with the outcome. To muddle through difficult situations thanks to a series of lucky chances. It is the root of the modern term ‘gumption’, meaning the courage to act, and the practice of common sense and presence of mind. The meaning of not wearing a watch and not being afraid to gamble began to make sense.

         The gumb’s way of living contrasted heartily with my own, for I was fear-based and living from a state of mind handed down through generations having lived in fear and desire as their basis, too. Now, don’t get this wrong, no one in this line of misfortune is to blame, for no one was aware. They were not aware that they were identified with a particular state of mind. This state of mind called the shots, and even defined perception at a basic unseen level. It gradually covered over the innocent perception of the children of each succeeding generation with a fog of fear, judgment and desire, and transformed them into identified, reactive-oriented robots, each with a pride-based ego that they were aware individuals with a handle on their lives, and the meaning of it all. What a trap, and what a joke. No wonder the image of the gumb and his way of action was so appealing.

         As time went by, I discovered this path or way of being in the writings of others, and in the actions of a few. William Samuel’s Child within, Richard Rose’s between-ness, Douglas Harding’s headless seeing, the Puer or Intermediary of Maurice Nicoll, and many other examples of this pure state of being.  While this listening attention, as I’ve come to call it, is not the final state, it is the door. It is the timeless portal between the manifest and the unmanifest, the gateway to within. It is how to live in the world, but not be of the world. The ego state of mind may be good at managing the world of daily affairs, but it cannot go beyond. The child within us transcends the world, being our link to the formless. We then see why the ancients called it the Son, and that the Son and the Father are One.

         The path to becoming the listening attention begins with self-observation. The hard work of ‘seeing’ what we really are, and what we are not. Later, we may find that we were the Child all along and had just become lost, but without this journey into time and space, we would not value our true state. To begin the homeward journey, look quickly, subtlety, without the editing of states of mind. In the moment of perception there lies a door, an attention that does not define, but simply sees. The nostalgic longing we feel at times for a better life, a real home, is a thread back to this child within. Follow it, and discover your own inner child, the gumb.

    Bob Fergeson

  • Why Don’t We Get It?

    ” What I suspect we need is not any kind of path or discipline, but a collection of tricks or devices for catching the Dark at the corner of the eye, as it were, and learning how to spot its just-waiting-to-be-seen presence, combined with strategies for stopping the hyperactive survival-programmes from immediately explaining the perception away. D. E. Harding’s exercises for discovering one’s own essential ‘headlessness’ are the best ideas I’ve yet come across for the first half of this process, but, by his own admission, most people ‘get it but simply don’t believe it’.” – John Wren-Lewis

    The above quote by John Wren-Lewis points out a common conundrum seen often nowadays in seekers of the Truth. Many of us can recall times when we were strangely indifferent to our usual pattern, and the world seemed new and alive, with the noise of the mind blessedly absent. Then, the thought-pattern of personality took back the reins and the world became once more known and dimmingly familiar. Even the startling effects of Douglas Harding’s exercises can become relegated to memory, for in our everyday world the miracle of ‘seeing’ is soon lost, replaced by the usual fog of ‘knowing’. Why is this? Why doesn’t something so startling as seeing without one’s own head last? Why is the ego’s hold on us so complete, that its survival is the paramount fact of our very life, robbing us of seeing without warning?


    We may think that the problem lies in emotion. That if we were just a bit more enthused about it all, we could retain the clarity through thick and thin. We come away from a seminar pumped up, making inner promises to never forget what we’ve seen, and to try harder at every turn. Here, we may be misled once more. The act of seeing is not one of emotion, anymore than it is of thought. The memory of seeing is not the act, any more than the memory of the emotional reaction is. I can remember once listening to an intense emotional sermon by a sincere preacher. Everyone in the church came under the same spell, convinced that they would go forth from that moment on and be a better person, worthy of the glory of eternal life. Then, an even stranger thing happened. While in the parking lot after the service, I realized I could not remember anything the preacher had said, not a word. I couldn’t even remember what I had been so enthused about. By the time I got home, the mood was completely gone; the thoughts and business of the day had totally replaced it.


    Now, there is nothing wrong with becoming inspired. It’s a necessary part of the path. But, it is not the goal. Seeing is not a state of being in perpetual bliss, about our seeing. This is again the trap of living in the reaction, not the state. This trap of reaction is a clue to why no matter how intense or startling a state is, we soon lose it. We are trying to get back to seeing by looking at the reaction. We forget to see, by trying to remember to see. We look at our previous emotional or mental reaction to seeing, while our seeing, always there in the moment, every second, is overlooked.


    Let’s back up a bit, and go back to the start of the problem. When we were first brought into the world, we were taught by people, well meaning but asleep, that we are a thing, an object, living in a world of things. We were taught that some of these things, our thoughts, were more real than our very being, meaning our seeing was secondary to our thinking about our seeing. This trick was played on us until we could do it ourselves. Once we were well trained in fooling ourselves, we became ‘thinking’. The world of thought became our new home. We lost our innocence, as we slowly lost sight of our seeing. We traded it for knowing, the unquestioned belief that our thoughts were more real than our seeing of our thoughts. Soon enough, we could no longer see our very seeing, and began to believe we were our thoughts.


    Here then, lies the problem. We have become a collection of thoughts, an entity, which treats every new moment as if it were already a memory, basing each new moment on only the past and the reaction this past has to each moment. We are so wrapped up in this thought-collection, this ‘knowing’, that we even treat a moment of seeing as if it were another memory, reacting to it as if we already know all about it. A reaction can never be in the moment, for only seeing happens now. This trap of living one step behind ourselves cannot be explained away with conceptual thinking or fought with reactionary emotional thrills. It cannot be gotten rid of by changing our behavior, such as going left instead of right. What then can be done?


    Franz Hartmann gives us a clue when he says, ” There is nothing more difficult to find than one’s own self.” There is also nothing more valuable. It is our own ‘self’ that is the problem. Any plan of escape from the trap of thought-reaction is simply this self trying to survive, even if the plan is one of perpetual seeing. The self will see seeing as yet another tool to perpetuate its own continuity. This self is a collection of thoughts, an inventory of all reactions, which seeks only its own continuity as a thought-pattern. The only way to deal with such a thing, is to see it. To observe it.


    Simple observation, unbiased and without reaction or judgment, i.e. seeing, will take us farther than any clever plan or emotional outburst. A return to innocence, the initial stage of not-knowing, will give us an edge, open a crack in the ego’s armor, and return the value of our very existence to that of seeing, rather than to the reaction to seeing. By beginning to watch what we do, we start a pattern of return to the state of a free attention. Once we are able to watch our ‘selves’ as we go about our daily tasks, we may soon see that we can watch our thoughts as well. We all have moments where seeing is spontaneous and personal. If we come to value these moments, we begin to switch our meaning from the world of thought back to that of awareness. We can take the tricks we learned at meetings and seminars and put them to use in every moment: while driving, working at our desk, and even while watching TV.


    We may soon notice a strange thing happening in our head, while we watch our watching. We may see that as soon as a moment of seeing fades, a familiar mood or state has returned, which is in fact the reason for the cessation of the seeing itself. This vaguely familiar pattern is our own state of mind. The collection of thoughts we feel to be ‘us’, has slipped back. The old pride in ‘knowing’ as reactive thought, our personal dogma, will slide in like a fog bank, and then we are our old self again, and the seeing is now incorporated into this ‘self’s’ inventory. “It” has survived, and we are back asleep.


    Only through the simple process of self-observation can this thing called the ‘self’ be seen. We may need years of looking at it, seeing why it does what it does, thinks what it thinks, until we know it well enough to cease to believe in it. All of our energy, for all of our life, has been poured into this thing: our personality, the little self, the ego. A few moments of seeing, while of momentous importance, will not cause its complete demise. This demise is what we fear most; for it is seen by the thought-pattern we call `us’, as death. At some point, the initial joy of seeing will turn to the pain of ego-death, as the Truth becomes known. It will not be pleasant. In fact, the pain and horror felt by the ego as it faces its own death, will be felt as yours. Hartmann’s words again ring true: “Conquer the pains resulting therefrom”. While all this may be just words to you for now, know that after you have gone beyond this realm of thought, beyond this self-surviving collection of reactions seeking nothing but its own continuity, ‘seeing’ will still be there. You will then have no more need of thought or reaction to give you meaning and value, as the simple act of seeing will once again be enough. The world of thought will no longer be your home, having become a movie, a dream, as much a comedy as a drama, wherein the bit character you used to call your ‘self’ is merely another player. Your interest will be only in a pure amazement at your own unknowable Being, … and perhaps the need to help another find freedom from the trap of reaction, the world of ‘self’.

    Bob Fergeson

  • Notes on the Journey Within

    Tolstoy said there are two fundamental stories in all great literature: “a man goes on a journey” or “a stranger comes to town.” When you examine them, both are really about change. They show that our comfortable routine—sitting safely in the village, wrapped in familiar habits, everything staying the same—is about to be disrupted in a major way.

    We have a choice in how we meet that change. It is far better to embark on the hero’s journey deliberately, with eyes wide open and a “yes” attitude—a positive, receptive state of mind—than to passively wait for the stranger to arrive. If you wait, you may learn nothing; worse, the story could turn dark. The stranger might be a dragon or a demon. It is preferable to confront such a force in the wilderness than to let it ravage half the village first. If we wait, the stranger eventually will come, and shatter the pattern. Real change—and real damage—will certainly follow. It is a risky chance.

    For the journey to be a true hero’s adventure rather than just more routine, certain conditions are essential. As Huxley observed, “experience only teaches the teachable.” If the hero sets out only to criticize and take offense at everything unfamiliar—judging new events against the narrow habits and thinking of his old life—little good will come of it. He will grow miserable, assign blame, and keep his small self firmly at the center. Nothing can truly change. But if he meets experience with an open-eyed, clear attitude, wonder becomes possible—wonder in the sense of questioning, and also in the sense of amazement and mystery. With this inner posture, he may begin to see the mysterious patterns that constitute him, reflected back in the events he encounters. He may come to know something real about himself.

    Courage, self-honesty, and being tested in different environments help keep the eyes wide open so he does not simply drag his old baggage along. The journey then proceeds with an open state of mind—what we might call “Yes” instead of “No.”

    For most of us, the journey begins by leaving the nest and stepping into life. Change often arrives first in seemingly ordinary things. Being open-minded—not merely in a polite, social sense—means being capable of truly seeing and listening rather than reflexively judging. This is not just a slogan; it is a practice. When we look to observe what is actually happening, non-critically and non-judgmentally, then marriage, raising children, building a home, starting a family, launching a business, pursuing a career, developing a talent or skill—any of these can become the journey, the path. We keep an open mind and refuse to force our life into something that only chases money or to adopt the bitter attitude that everything always goes wrong, that the world is against us, and that only we are right.

    If we can reclaim our innocence, we become capable of something different. We can develop real skill, a direct way of engaging the world. We can become a parent, a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, a leader, a reliable colleague—identities profoundly different from who we were as teenagers or toddlers. For those who complete this phase and later feel a nostalgic pull, a remembering of something greater than ordinary life can offer, the journey can turn inward. It becomes an exploration of what we are truly like and whether something real lies beneath the surface.

    This inward turn must also be undertaken with a sense of mystery, wonder, and eyes wide open. Otherwise, we risk simply rationalizing and blaming what we find inside. But if we observe inwardly in a universal, neutral way—true, non-judgmental observation—then we can learn from it and gradually free ourselves from the emotional hot spots and knots accumulated over a lifetime. This, too, is the hero’s journey: an adventure of stalking oneself, of coming to know oneself.

    Richard Rose pointed out that we must get to know the self precisely because it is the thing we know least about. Most of us assume we already know ourselves, but honest, non-critical self-inquiry often brings real surprises. It can be deeply depressing and profoundly enlightening at the same time. Yet it remains an adventure as long as we maintain the eyes-wide-open, non-judgmental attitude. Beating ourselves up, blaming parents, society, or some other group so we can feel right—these are not productive. Pure observation is what matters.

    This non-judgmental approach works equally for the outward journey and the inward one.

    Once we understand how “going within” operates, nostalgia—or what Rumi calls “a longing”—becomes our guide. This longing is not sentimental. It has nothing to do with sitting on the porch of the old farm, drinking lemonade, and drifting into fond childhood memories. We are seeking an entirely different set of guideposts, a different environment, a different version of ourselves—one we only vaguely remember. We carry faint memories of heaven, and if we follow this thread of longing, it can lead somewhere Real.

    Richard Rose also discovered through his dreams that life is dominated by three main moods. The two primary ones are opposites: seduction and fear (or desire and fear). Desire pulls us outward toward things; fear drives us back toward security. Neither leads the soul inward or upward beyond this dimension—they simply make us chase or flee. But nostalgia—the remembering of who we were before we came here—is different. It is the thread that can guide us Home, toward something eternal.

    Bob Fergeson

  • On the Turning of Heads:

    First there must be enough trauma or suffering to turn us away from the belief in life as an end in itself.  If we are lucky enough to be thrown into the unknown, through sheer desperation or misery, we may find that we emerge ok, that something took care of us.  This forced surrender gives us renewed Faith.   We begin to trust something greater beyond life and the world of the five senses. This shift in meaning is usually synchronistic with a teacher ‘ringing our bell’.  There is an inner connection established between our inner self and this ‘God incarnate’, the Guru. Something in us awakes and our head turns towards a new view. The old values of the rat race and mundane pleasure are no longer enough, and we see our new-found teacher as proof that there is something else worth doing.


    Somewhere along here we will begin to see in a real, personal way that we are mechanical, a robot.  That as personalities, or egos, we are nothing but accidental associative reaction patterns.  We don’t exist.  But our heads are locked on this robot, identified with it in an almost absolute hypnosis. This includes inherited and learned states of mind and moods, that are precursors to reaction patterns.  Seeing this gives us a shock, and we begin to learn the hard way that no amount of tinkering with the associative pattern will give us real being: the realization that endless analysis of the robot is a dead end.  We begin to look within.  This acceptance and the following ability to turn the head inward only comes after every mental avenue has been exhausted.   We can no longer place a high value on states such as ‘happiness’, justified negative emotions, mundane pleasures, or even elevated ‘spiritual states’ or feelings of well-being, such as ‘being a good boy’, a do-gooder, etc. Confrontation, whether in a group setting or from being engaged with everyday life, helps us to see our mechanical nature and the uselessness of putting our faith in its eventual perfection.  It also helps to bring up real conscience, which enables us to have compassion for our fellow man, as we see he cannot change either, and is also not a conscious being.

    Continuing to go within, as there’s nowhere else to go, we begin to see the value in listening.  We begin to develop and place value on the ‘Listening Attention’.  We realize that we don’t know, but that knowledge is available.  We begin to hear Higher Centers and value their help.  This leads to a return of faith in the inner self and begins the inner relaxation and loosening of energy knots(egos) formed by implanted erroneous beliefs.  Given this new mental freedom, we can see the dualistic nature of the mind, with its penchant for ever increasing the subtlety of its ego through cleverness. We sooner or later separate from it and thereby realize the observing awareness that is our true self, “This I know is me”,  the self that realizes its own nothingness.

    This receiving of the experience of ourselves as awareness also leads us to see that this awareness is the same in everyone. We have become Universal after our long-lost voyage in the particular and find ourselves back Home, where we’ve always been.

    Bob Fergeson

  • The Painful Journey: How Nostalgia Leads Us Home

    Much of the deep restlessness we feel—the persistent inner ache—arises at some point in a seekers life. The child, once immersed in a state of unseparated innocence and being within, gradually emerges into a world that severs that direct connection to the inner self. Parents and society, themselves already disconnected from this inner ground, feed the feeling of loss, of  separation. The child becomes dependent on them for security, love, and identity, and in doing so loses touch with his own true self.

    This loss creates the ache, the ‘ longing’ of Rumi and CS Lewis. At first the child cannot clearly see this separation, for the parents appear as God, almost divine in their role, and the external world seems to hold promise of what was once felt inwardly. When the parents fail to live up to their divine status, the child looks to society for meaning. His restlessness leads him ever outward; the sense of lack deepens. The  search for that lost reality turns ever outward, ever farther into relationships, possessions, status, and distractions; always in the wrong direction.

    Only when the accumulated suffering becomes unbearable, when the outward path reaches its limit in sickness, depression and ennui, does the seeker turn inward occur. Through necessity and grace the mind’s attention reverses. In returning to the inner self, however this may occur, the bottomless longing is found to be simply the pain of separation from one’s own true nature—the same separation that characterized the parents and those before them.

    Stalking the Inner Self
    Stalking the Inner Self

    Had a parent remained inwardly connected, the child might have picked up on it, been positively imprinted, and returned to his inner self through a natural path. But this is rare and easily misunderstood. Strangely enough, this pattern of disconnection followed by re-connection appears necessary. Without having lost the sense of oneself, one would not see the contrast earned through the separation. Once reestablished, the entire preceding struggle appears almost absurd. We emerge from unconscious struggle into conscious being.

    What I’ve found resolves the longing and sense of separation is not formal psychological analysis or tracing chains of past events. Such investigation can become another form of avoidance. The intense nostalgia which leads us finally within, can be seen as a remembering. Nothing is really created, but we find the thread back to what we covered up, the real, with ego-centered feelings and thoughts. The key is not conceptual understanding as much as a direct seeing, looking at the little life created ‘self’, what I have called the ‘little man’. The difficulties and lost feelings we carry as this little man are present in every moment, not only locked in childhood memories requiring excavation. Ask yourself the hard questions, in the now, without rationalization. What does it feel like? What does it want? Why does it hurt? You may find instead of incidents and words, hidden knots in one’s being.

    The direct approach is to turn toward the present feeling itself, in the here and now. Sit with the ache as it is right now, without fleeing or explaining it away. Watch the pain regardless how much the ego wants to run away into distraction and pleasure. Observe it openly, allowing the quiet awareness within—the inner self—to regard it plainly and honestly. What does this sensation reveal about the longing and pain? What is it truly seeking? The cause and the resolution are embedded in that immediate experience, accessible only through unmediated seeing in the present, not through retrospective analysis. It hurts, yes. But avoiding the pain feeds the knot, which continues to live in the unconscious. Facing it until we have removed the pain through patient acceptance can eventually bring peace and understanding.

    That seeing, when sustained, is where the separation between what we have become and what we truly are, ends. The ache itself proves to be a pointer, not an enemy—quietly directing attention back to what was never truly absent.

    – Bob Fergeson

  • On Learning to Listen

    “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

    – William Shakespeare, Macbeth

    Paracelsus was known to be able to look at anything, an herb, plant or mineral, and divine its essence, and thus its purpose and use. A direct knowing, given by the Universal Intelligence, to one who had ears to hear. How might we tap into this direct insight of the universe? Most of us are trapped with only a very limited ‘knowing’ which is basically the description of opinions derived from an arbitrary point of observation; a fixed pattern, based only on the recalled past. This ‘knowing’ or ego/mind, is hardly capable of knowing itself, much less the essence of an herb, plant, or our Source. This ego is derived from the experience of a character in a story, who is basically unconscious; a scripted unwitting idiot telling a tale, ultimately signifying nothing. To know directly, as Paracelsus, we would have to leave our story-drama and its trap, and become something wider, deeper. We are capable of hearing more than the mind’s obsessive chattering about our personal character’s recalled experiences. We may begin to wake up, and feel as Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Did I do anything wrong today, or has the world always been like this and I’ve been too wrapped up in myself to notice?”

    Only something which has no vested interest in the drama can look outside of the character in its tale, and see the universal reality behind the dream of life. This is a very scary proposition, it threatens the very system of the drama, for we derive our identity from our character and story-line, each defining the other. The drama is seldom questioned, for this can only happen by stepping outside of it; a paradox. We refuse to listen to the voice of the silence within, because that would imply we don’t know it all already. How can we learn to turn to this inner listening, to hear the voice of intuition, of insight?

    Spending time alone is one way. We take a break from the distractions of our electronic age with its cell phones, computers, TV’s, etc., plus the well meaning but distracting voices of our friends and family. This can give us time to learn to appreciate silence, and to listen. Perhaps we’ll reacquaint ourselves with a long lost companion deep within: our own heart. Time spent alone removes the relentless pressure imposed on us by society to conform to its standards, and allows our mind to clear and become quiet. Another pressure is the ego’s defense against its main fear, the unknown. This also requires much time and energy, and blocks out anything that doesn’t fit the storyline. Nothing from the higher power within is allowed to get through.

    Another way is to spend time with those who value listening within, and have found their connection to the inner voice. These fellow seekers can save us time and energy, having been down the long road to their inner self and thus able to help us along our path as well. The higher energy fields of these companions will give the inner self a taste of its own potential. Their inner calm and quiet are a stark contrast to the tale of sound and fury we have been dreaming so hard, without question.

    The world of dreams is similar to this drama we call our life. When in a dream, we take it for real, and the experiences of the dream as telling us a true ‘knowing’ about the dream-world. But when interpreted upon awakening, we see it as only a story of our character’s mind, and this ‘knowing’ as being simply a description of this mind291 that made the dream-world. The individual pattern or view-point is what’s known. Nothing is objectively known about the so-called things, inhabitants, or possible reality of the dream.

    To find the reality behind the dream, and possibly behind the dream character, we must find something higher. This universal intelligence is constantly speaking to us, always trying to get our attention. This voice of insight or intuition is drowned out by the voices of the characters in our drama. Look bravely at the plots of the dramas in life you’ve seen. They all end the same, and nothing is gained. Death conquers all, and the story with all its sound and fury, endlessly repeats. Question the character you’ve been lost in, and the drama of your own so-called life and its significance. Search fearlessly to find the nameless Something behind the play; the calm, clear reality beyond the dream, where nothing is done, nobody’s there to do it, and all is perfect in silence.

    Bob Fergeson