Reclaim The Power Of Your Attention

And stop giving it away so easily

Attention is the currency of the universe. Where attention goes, energy flows. Our inner reserve of energy is a treasure trove that is ours by birthright. Too often we give away our attention too cheaply, allowing ourselves to get caught up in things that in no way benefit us. This keeps our minds settled on the surface. We lose touch with the imminent connection to the Divine each and every one of us has in the center of our own being.

Refill Your Inner Reserve Of Energy

The source of our creative potency lies in the very center of our being. This core is an ocean of energy, and its outflow makes up our entire lives. We are often conditioned to compulsively direct this energy outwards, but this only serves to deplete our inner reserve. We want our default mode of being to be one of attention abiding in its own presence, without a point of focus. This meditative state allows for the natural pooling of energy.

The very act of moving attention uses some portion of our energy, as does all action. The more it is depleted in this way, the more its potency is weakened. One component of spiritual practice is as simple as bringing an ever-increasing bulk of your energy and attention back to rest within your center.

The only thing that holds off the natural pooling of energy within is the outward orientation of attention. Anything that can be perceived or experienced is external from the center. You are ultimately looking for that which sees. You cannot perceive it, you can only be it. Of course, there will be times that life will demand the use of all of our faculties. But apart from specific and intentional use, allow your attention to withdraw and abide in its own presence.

The Importance Of Feelings On The Path To Inner Space

Along the inward path, feelings exist closer to the center of being than thoughts. Feelings brush right up against the energy-body. They lie directly on the border between ego and soul. As intuition, they can bring you across the abyss. As ego-driven obsession, they weigh you down further into the gravity well that is the physical plane.

This is why you have to be discerning when it comes to the thoughts you allow yourself to dwell upon and the impulses you allow yourself to act upon. When a thought unworthy of indulgence arises, the principle is to create distance between yourself and the thought. It is a cloud passing only fleetingly across the sky of your being.

Make a practice of coming back to the feeling-body, the raw sensations of energy within yourself. Time and time again, settle into this feeling-body. As you feel your attention extend out, always bring it back to the space in which it exists. Allow the energy to pool into the center.

Mindfulness In Daily Living

Mindfulness is a more broad application of the principle, potentially illuminating all areas of life; it is a fundamental spiritual practice. In the practice of mindfulness, we simply allow our presence and attention to fall into the actuality of the moment. We allow the present reality with which we are engaged to fill our entire consciousness.

Even in this active state, mindfulness will help bring you to your center. It allows you to view all things happening from within the space of your presence. The clouds are not inherently separate from the sky; it is only our minds which make them appear that way.

Recognition Of Not-Self

A fundamental principle of Buddhism is anatta, not-self. This principle goes hand in hand with the meditative process of dis-identification from the objects of perception and the internal content of one’s mind. The entire experiential world is said to comprise five skandhas, aggregates. These skandhas are form, sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. Along with the recognition of the skandhas, there is the recognition that they are not-self.

Form refers to physical form. Sensations refer to the immediate point of contact between sensory input and sensory apparatus, whether internally or externally apprehended. Perception refers to the way we identify and distinguish between discrete entities. Formations refer to the actions of will, as well as conditioned tendencies. Given that much we might broadly consider mind is included within these skandhas, what is the meaning of the fifth, consciousness?

Consider consciousness as representing the direct experience of reality resulting from the harmonization of various skandhas into a cohesive self/world interface. To say that consciousness is not-self is to imply that it does not exist apart from experience itself. Consciousness arises alongside the emergence of phenomena, rather than as a self-existent and enduring property.

We React To What We Are

We are surrounded by a never-ending field of stimuli capable of shaking us out of our center. We react to the ones we do precisely because they reflect aspects of ourselves. We don’t react to things we don’t recognize.

The world we perceive is our own inner dynamics writ large. This is why hypocrisy abounds. We tend to be most disturbed by that which either currently is, or at one point was, applicable to ourselves.

We live in a hall of mirrors, which keeps us relentlessly chasing our own shadow. Blinded by the flashing trigger points which surround us, we get lost in pursuing our own tail. In this way, our energies are disbursed, and our creative potency is weakened.

Maya And The Awakening Of The Soul

When our inner reserves are insufficiently pooled, the desert of the soul emerges. This is a desert of maya, illusion, and it spawns all manner of obsessions and hallucinations. The internal energies are the life-sustaining waters that give form to the real and allow for the emergence of the Kingdom.

We can spend life after life, aeon after aeon, pursuing the phantoms of the desert. Yet through all of this, life grows of its own accord when we sit, and we simply are. This is how we get in touch with our true nature as a unit within the body of God, Atma within Brahma, Star within the body of Nuit.