If you read any spiritual or new age material, you’re bound to run into ideas like ’emotions fuel desires’ and ‘healing the heart’ and ‘the power of passion’. Including on this blog. Emotions are quite potent tools in creating our world and our experience of same.
But there’s something even more powerful. More powerful than anything you can imagine. It is the power of your attention. While emotions may be the energy that makes things happen, attention is the well and pipeline that fuel comes from.
I’ve spoken a number of times here of how everything arises in consciousness, how everything is intended. Practically, intended consciousness is called attention. While it may not be obvious, the point of your attention is the point at which infinity is collapsing to a point. Even as you read these words. When we are open to that flow, infinite power moves through our attention. This is why great teachers you may have met have an astonishing gaze, like standing in a high wind.
When we’re in the habit of engaging our attention in small details and have lost our connection with source, that power is not as great. Only enough to create our world. (laughs) When our mind and emotions flutter about on this and that, we are dissipated. When we put our attention powerfully on something, then cancel it with doubt and worry, we turn off the power. But never underestimate the power of what you are giving your attention to. You are building our world with it.
It’s easy to see that as we develop a deeper connection to source, settle some of the emotional and mental noise, and step back from the small part of ourselves we’ll be turning up the amperage of our attention.
Indeed, this can be one of the unexpected challenges along the path. When we find we are getting what we want and people are being effected by out attention. We have to pay more attention to our habits. Be more mindful.
As our attention gets unencumbered, it can be a powerful tool. Turn our attention to silence, and we’re there without technique. Turn our attention to the heart and it blossoms out in love. Simple shifting of attention moves us into infinite freedom, deep intuitive knowledge, and the movement and direction of life. We can clear long held crusts, travel the universe*, or visit God. Without moving a muscle.
“…if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”
— The Bible, Matthew 17:20
If we consider what I mentioned about bringing infinity to a point with our attention, the example of a tiny mustard seed suggests another meaning. This is the Dharana of Samyama described by Patanjali. He described siddhis or powers such as walking through fire, knowledge of the past and future, being able to see inside the body, and the superman trick, flying. Or perhaps you’d like to be able to understand any language or creature. Or have the strength of an elephant.
These are not secrets. They’ve been described for thousands of years. But until you have unencumbered, innocent attention, they remain the talents of the Kryptonese.
This is the source of the knowledge of ancient priests, seers, and shamans. How they could describe the rings and moons of Saturn without a telescope or see the long trends of time. Consciousness is not bound by space or time so neither is it’s focus of attention, you. You are your attention. You are the infinite in a point.
Davidya
* what I’m referring to here is movement of attention within consciousness, not astral travel. Astral travel involves divorcing the astral body from the physical and using it as a vehicle. The astral or emotional “plane” is also were the messiest stuff is. Movement within consciousness is simple attention, no separation or mud required.
Last Updated on May 21, 2014 by
Would you attribute the quality of attention to purusha or prakriti?
Also, If I pay attention to my attention.. doesn’t this create a Self-referral loop?
If I let my Attention guide my awareness.. meaning becoming aware of the loudest thing in my awareness currently (any and all sense organs), moment by moment, Is the the innocence you speak of?
Letting my attention live it’s own life without manually moving it myself? Without thinking about or forming opinions about where my Attention goes?
Is my Attention God?
Hi William
To Purusha, essentially your local sense of observer. Prakriti means nature, what is behind the appearance of the world.
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However, this is a dualistic model that assumes a separation between these when more deeply, they are both consciousness – purusha arising from the observer aspect and prakriti arising from the process and the observed side of self-aware consciousness.
I explore these dynamics here:
https://davidya.ca/2014/08/09/awareness-becomes-self-aware/
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Everything you experience is a self-referral loop. Without that, there would be no experience and no world and no sense of self.
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Paying attention to attention is simply becoming aware of these subtler dynamics. It’s also the essence of waking up – when Self sees itself.
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What I describe is essentially noticing. Noticing where attention is going and what is attracting it. However, identified mind tends to co-opt such things and try to control them. So if there is any sense of control, grasping or aversion in the experience that part is not innocent.
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So yes, letting it do its thing and letting life be as it is.
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This is much easier when there is less identification and more clarity. Yoga indicates we develop this through samadhi. As we gain clarity and fluidity, attention begins to be able to notice itself rather than just be caught in the pull of desires and resistance and so forth.
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From the perspective here, attention is a side-effect of God. It’s like a wave in the ocean of God. We could say an aspect of the Divine but not the Divine in its wholeness.