Just One Look Forum Archives

I was just emailing jazzrascal and thought I would paste this from what I was writing as I'm sure there are some people here who have practiced buddhist breath counting meditation and the like. All the very best, Lex

"Yes, of course this self directed attention is quite a challenge! Some of it is kind of what I expected.. Certain times I do the SDA exercise I am able to count up higher than others. I haven't yet reached the point where I can go a full ten minutes continually counting up to ten with no thoughts. I think it's even valuable just focusing the attention for the count of 1. I had studied anapanasati before with a buddhist meditation teacher. When I was doing it a lot, the counting fell away and I could go for a long time without thoughts coming in. But, because I didn't have the understanding that John is speaking of, I gave up the practice as I wasn't seeing any concrete benefits. That's why I have gotten so much out of reading and listening to John speaking of the difference between buddhist mindfulness meditation and SDA. It makes so much more sense to me to have this outlook and, now, I feel I can clearly see the benefits of developing this."

I've only been doing this practice for a little over a week and I'm sure most of the people reading this have heard all John's podcast/youtubes.. but I thought I'd mention that I found 'conversation 9' on youtube to really give me excellent insights into what I always felt was missing from meditation practices I've studied. And I like the fact that, technically, John doesn't refer to this SDA practice as meditation.. It's just simply an exercise to focus the attention, and I think this is very accurate. It's a way to understand how this differs from the way most people understand meditation and it's usual goals and ideas. What John is speaking about is what I've found that those few people who have been able to effect what would be considered 'miraculous' healings throughout history have also emphasized as a major key to healing itself. But I've never seen them present what I experienced as an effective tool for doing so. I do believe it's like John is talking about, that a lot of times these insights certain people have had about all of this have been confined by spiritual/religious belief paradigms of the time which clouded the clarity of practices of gaining insight into one's true nature.

I couldn't agree more. This is what I've also found with other teachings. Ideas about healing would be presented, and then you were left on your own. There was never anything simple and practical that you could do, and over the years I found this more and more frustrating and futile. I'd also like to add (and I'll post more about this later) that it makes perfect sense to me that this method can cure physical ailments, since they are nothing but thought/emotion.

For whatever reason, during my life I have been led to people, totally unexpectedly, with some tremendous mystical gifts. I had an opportunity to study with, for over the year in a mystical fashion, with a fellow who healed tens of thousands of people in Germany and Europe right after WWII. Many of his healings were, and still are verified by medical doctors.. There are thousands of MD's worldwide that have been in a group for years based around this fellows teachings. One of his main points about healing was what John is talking about with the focused attention. To have the ability to focus on what we want and, then, the illness/ailment, or whatever the problem, would fall away/die out from lack of attention. His whole thing was never to speak about illness, problems, etc. To only focus on what he called 'The Good'. Because of the time he lived in, he had to use religious terminology since most all of the people were of a particular religious faith. Without that, I think there would have been even more dramatic results with more people. So this is one of the reasons I am so excited about John and Carla's work, because John speaks about this and actually has what appears to be a very powerful practice to accomplish this that I have never seen before - and I have checked many things out in this regard. It just seems so clear, simple, and logical coming from the background I come from. It's like, 'Hey, why didn't I think of that?!' Of course!!;-)

To me it's practically a no-brainer that John and Carla's work would result in not only psychological, but physical healing as well. All dis-ease (hyphen intentional) has its roots in fear, and is a product of the mind/emotions...there's nothing random. Even some allopathic doctors are starting to wake up to this fact. So it doesn't make sense to me that this method would affect only psychological difficulties and that we should seek out doctors and drugs for physical problems, although I do understand why some people still feel the need to do so.

I also encountered, read about, and heard about many healings without medical aid during my years in Christian Science, and had a few healings of my own, but was never able to rid myself of the chronic condition I now have. I'm convinced that it's nothing but fear, and the daily practice of self-directed attention has made this very clear to me. In any case, I feel that this work (Just One Look) has a more practical approach than Christian Science and other spiritual healing modalities, and therefore the potential to help a lot more people simply because it's so practical and not difficult to do. I'm just a beginner here, but I'm already starting to see and feel results.