'Anticipation' Articles
Attention is like a bow. Intention is the arrow, and anticipation is the skill of targeting. Your problems now were also desires. They now seem to be problems because you have a habit that produces errors in anticipation. We can engage the anticipation activity consciously, deliberately, and improve our relationship to it.
You anticipate better by being mindful of the whole process. The process is awareness, identification, anticipation, action. Anticipation starts with awareness. You have to be willing to accept exactly what your awareness presents to you now. The second step is identification. The key realization is that everything that can happen will happen because of what is possible now. Even if you didn’t want to take the skill any further, you could get very good at identification and watch processes unfold into outcomes in every part of life. But most people are unable to leave everything they encounter alone. This is where the actual state of anticipation kicks in. To create an outcome we cannot target anything as it is now.
“Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.” Norman Cousins (American Essayist and Editor. 1912-1990)
“As Daddy said, life is 95 percent anticipation.” Gloria Swanson
Skill of Targeting
To begin with a question, what is anticipation? The expectation of some event or idea to happen. A dog drools when anticipating his meal. To wait for something to happen. Imagining how something is going to be when it happens. It generally has a positive context. True. I will offer mine. Anticipation is active belief. Passive belief is prejudice. Two sides of the same coin though, and we will go into that. It is called dread perhaps when in the negative context. Paranoia as well? Indeed. Paranoia is a well developed habit of dread, but we can develop any of… Seek More
Engage Anticipation Consciously
Attention is like a bow. Intention is the arrow, and anticipation is the skill of targeting. There is a discipline that works with this archery metaphor. I find it a simple guideline to help me reality check my internal behaviour against my experienced outcomes. In Zen archery, they teach both the skill of archery and a center other than hitting the target. In Zen archery, you focus on archery as a process, and as you practice, it reflects your state of mind. They continue to practice not because they want to get better at hitting the target, but because they want… Seek More
Anticipate Better
I seem to live in my imagination. You are just more aware than others. We all live in our imaginations. If you think you can do anything, if you believe there is anything you can count on, that is your imagination. Imagination is reality, but your imagination may be running away with you. Imagination can serve you or tyrannize you. What makes the difference is to what degree you can effectively anticipate things. Anticipation starts with awareness. No matter what, reality continues to inform you and present you with experiences of an infinite variety. From this immeasurable range of experience,… Seek More
Seize the Life Force
Can you develop your anticipation skills? You can develop your anticipation skills. They come down to emotional tone and psychological attitude or disposition. You can substitute the word targeting or planning if you prefer. I use the word anticipation to evoke a more organic and experiential engagement with what otherwise might be a sterile and highly arbitrary intellectual abstraction. Do you mean anticipation in the sense of intuition? Intuitively interpreting a situation and reacting accordingly? Intuition incorporated into other factors as a total complex. I find heuristic analysis often defeats the clarity of perception needed to apply theses principles. Intuitively… Seek More
Guilt From Prejudice
Is full anticipation possible even for a Buddha, or is it too big in total? Full anticipation is not possible even for a Buddha. The teachings of liberation are based on this. Why do people feel guilt for not anticipating something? Guilt arises from prejudice. The remorse comes from a sense of self abnegation for having given ones attention to something static, dead, rather than alive and symbiotic to you. If it lead to an injury for instance, the prejudice being that the injury would not have happened if something different was done? Yes. Saying it could have happened to… Seek More
Keeping the Rhythm of Life
Anticipation as a life function. I will ask you, can one live and function without ever anticipating anything? We have an instinctive need of anticipation. It’s part of what tells us we are well and everything is right, or right enough, in our world. Every living thing tries to achieve a certain state that is often called homeostasis. It’s that comfortable balance that lets us know that everything is in order, but nothing is a real emergency. Anticipation is a part of our natural balance. Expectation? No. Expectation is a cognitive function, usually the product of abstract thinking. Anticipation is… Seek More
Negative Space Patterns
Ever find yourself watching water drip from a faucet? Notice you have a sense of its rhythm even if it’s a little staggered? Yes, the body mind stops. Suddenly one is feeling, and everything is less serious, and all is ok. Indeed. That is the essence of what I am getting at on anticipation as a life function, and I will go into deeper application. You can have that sense of everything in your life. It’s not only an option, it’s a necessity. If we are cut off from it too much or for too long, it can compromise our… Seek More
Highest Reward
People mistake being in touch with reality for having everything figured out, making plans and having your plans work as they supposedly should. Some people even force this to work with such a vicious intensity they can seem to succeed on a regular basis. But looked at more fully, the consequences of their actions are even worse than those who have a more moderate degree of success. Anything that ignores the whole will not ultimately last or succeed, and is why we are having so much social, economic and spiritual crisis. But the flaws in human thinking are not evidence… Seek More
Create From Yourself
How do I become more creative? You create not out of the world. You can’t create with situations. You can’t create with objects or even other people. You create from yourself. Imagine an amoeba, if you will. It has a fixed amount of mass and shares its energy with its environment, but when it wants something more, like something to eat, it has to create an extension of itself. Grow more of itself in a space it can move into, and then recollect its mass in the new location. Anticipating where the food is also helps me move into it?… Seek More
Center Then Move
There is more than just self available to inform your actions. Going back to the amoeba, when you extend yourself into a space that isn’t fit for you, you have an innate sense for it, an instinct, and you want to pull back. Everything in you knows it’s not good, that it only hurts, but you may make yourself take that emotional and mental acid bath in the name of “having reasons”. How often does this happen for you friends? We are all taught to think for solutions to problems, but it’s almost a waste of time. One must feel… Seek More
