Most of us are directing our energies in materialistic directions.   We put all we have into finding the best job, developing financial security, finding a better relationship, acquiring and breaking habits, and sticking words and labels on everything.   If we were able to turn off all these outer spigots through which our energies are pouring out, and instead direct them inward toward the reservoir of pure life force, not only would we have much more power available to achieve our daily goals, but we would also find that our goals might change drastically to accommodate the greater knowledge and understanding that is now available to our awareness.   It's like seeing a child whose only intense desire in the world is to get that package of candy at the checkout counter.   As adults, the child's behavior looks, well, childish.   We know that getting a candy bar is not as important as all that.   One day we will look back at today's desires with the same knowing eye, as our evolution continues.

            The eyes of consciousness.   The opening and shutting of the flow of energy is echoed throughout this manifestation.   Cycles upon cycles.   The waves roll in and move out, the breath comes in and goes out, our states of consciousness move within us and disperse just as the clouds roll across the sky and then dissolve into the ether.   We ourselves sleep, close our minds and let go of our conscious awareness, and then we reopen our awareness and recreate the world.   While asleep, we close our physical eyes and open the inner vision, as countless worlds dance across our personal screen of consciousness.   Even the very neurons that support, activate and guide our awareness are like big on/off switches.   Opening and closing, motion and stillness, consciousness and unconsciousness.  

            From the tiniest molecular level to our highest consciousness, we see these same cycles of opening and shutting, appearance and dissolution.   It has been postulated that the entire universe blinks off to complete blackness, a black hole if you will, every so many billions of years.   According to other philosophers, the universe is blinking on and off constantly, at a speed so rapid as to be imperceptible to our sensory and mental mechanisms.  

The tangible world is movement, say the Masters,
not a collection of moving objects, but movement itself.
There are no objects "in movement", it is the movement
which constitutes the objects which appear to us: they are nothing but movement.
This movement is a continued and infinitely rapid succession of flashes of energy . . .
All objects perceptible to our senses, all phenomena of whatever kind
and whatever aspect they may assume,
are constituted by a rapid succession of instantaneous events.
-The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects