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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Choose What You Embrace
I find myself without a calling. I feel no direction. Ideas of my future come and go. Maybe I will amble along aimlessly in this life. It upsets my mind! There’s work to be done saving humanity, etc. Any suggestions? Maybe our task is to let go fully. Radical change is scary. I am experiencing something…
Category: Anticipation
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