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Find New Strength in Awakened Attention
by Guy Finley
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Whether for its
joy or sorrow, whatever we wish for another person comes
true for us in the same moment we make that wish!
Imagine for a moment a woman
who inherits an antique jewelry box from a loving
grandparent. She puts the cherished keepsake on her
makeup bureau, next to her own collection of rings and
pearls, but never really pays it much mind. And there it
sits. But what she doesn’t know is that her grandmother
hid a priceless diamond ring within it, in a secret
compartment. It’s hers to have, if only she knew where
to look for it. But will she?
In many ways this is a story
not unlike our own: for “hidden” within each of us, and
yet in plain sight, is a power unmatched in its
brilliance. What is this potential diamond of the mind
that awaits whoever will find it? It is our ability to
attend to what we will. Coupled with awareness,
attention empowers us to unite ourselves with whatever
we wish to know and be. Let’s examine this largely
unexplored gift of ours.
We are all graced with an
immense interior gift: the power to give our attention
to what we will – to what enriches and serves us.
Continuing states of stress
and sorrow are the result of having mistakenly placed
our attention upon what punishes us, stealing from us
our happiness as a result. Any time our attention is
given to some thought or feeling, it animates that
condition; our attention invests what it falls on with a
certain kind of life energy. Another unknown phenomenon
about attention is that when it is given to something –
for instance, a timeless night sky – it facilitates
within us a union with the qualities of that “world.”
And this dynamic is in operation all the time: to
consider something is to be connected to it. So, our
attention connects, animates, and nourishes whatever we
lend it to in life. And more than this, but as a part of
its power, we have all witnessed the following:
You’re stopped at a red light,
and you look out your car window at someone passing by.
You follow him with your eyes – interested in something
about his appearance or manner. As you remotely study
this person, the power of attention moves through and
across time and space and it “touches” him in some way.
The next thing you know he turns around and looks at
you!
This power can be used for
good or bad. When we use it for practical work, or for
honest self-observation, we use it to our own benefit.
However, when this power operates on its own, within us,
without our awareness of what it’s interacting with, it
can cause many problems. Here is where the unattended
mind becomes the breeding ground of self-defeat. For
instance, any time our attention is placed, without our
knowing it, on some way to escape ourselves, here’s what
happens: more often than not we find out – too late – we
got hooked up with some self-harming idea that
ultimately led us to compromise ourselves.
This new kind of
self-knowledge places us on the threshold of a wholly
different, brighter life. If by being inattentive to our
own interior life, we see how much of our unhappiness is
self-created, then, we can learn to redirect our
attention, placing it within what is right and bright.
But, there is only one way to realize this reversal: we
must work to see how wrongly directed attention works
against us.
Perhaps a thought pops into
your mind about a problem that’s been bothering you.
Appearing with it is some emotional disturbance. Now the
thought starts rolling, growing in its demand for your
attention. Almost instantly it has defined what needs to
be done, or what you are powerless to do. And both
states accomplish the same dark end: You’ve unknowingly
animated that thought and given it a life – and the life
you’ve given it is your own! Here’s an example of how
this scene might unfold:
A man is walking through his
office when his boss walks by and gives him a blank
look. The thought pops into the man’s mind that his boss
is criticizing him or doesn’t like him. Now, as he
starts to fear this idea – a negative picture produced
by his imagination – his mind focuses its attention on
this disturbing image. And the more he attends to this
dark dream, the further into its labyrinth he descends,
strengthening its presence and power to further irritate
him. A heartbeat later, he has no doubt: the boss has it
in for him! This thought grows in authority for him,
tormenting him for the rest of the day and causing him
to snap at his family when he gets home. And all of this
suffering is born of what? The conjunction of a passing
glance and a moment of misdirected attention!
Here’s the amazing thing about
this illustration, and what we want to learn from it:
this whole drama has been played out inside of the man –
storyline, stage, cast, and leading characters. But he
doesn’t see how this painful state is self-created;
instead he believes it has been cast upon him by someone
else – his heartless boss! So, what else can he do –
being in the dark as he is to his true condition – but
try to rid himself of his stressed feelings? How? By
arguing with his boss, either outwardly or in his mind.
The more he feels punished by the situation that he sees
in his mind, the more he wants to fight with it. He’s
sure his unwanted experience exists independent of his
perception of it, but we can see he’s mistaken. His pain
is a product of how he sees the event and then all of
the misery that comes with resisting his own mistaken
perception. He is quite literally lashing himself, and
the more he resists what he thinks is happening, the
more it happens to him! This is a good description of
what I call the “circle of self.” In it we can see how
the pain of our own mistaken perception produces the
enemies it needs to keep itself alive.
From our vantage point, we can
see how the man’s unattended mind first animated a
fearful thought, which leads to wrongly feeding it with
his own life. We can also see that nothing can change
for him until he sees the truth behind his trouble and
withdraws his consent from it.
We suffer because we consort
with painful thoughts and feelings, thinking somehow
that not wanting them makes them go away. But our
unconscious actions betray us: first, by animating what
makes us ache, and then by binding us to that
relationship through our resistance to it. Here’s a
simple way of saying these last few ideas: Not wanting
our negative states actually nourishes them! I can
almost hear the question that comes next: “Wait a
minute! You can’t be saying these dark thoughts and
feelings are good, and that we should want what’s
hurting us, are you?”
Of course not! Negative states
have no right to exist in us as they presently do. And
that’s just the point. We literally give them a place to
live in our psychic system – feed them, as it were – by
trying to rid ourselves of them in the usual ways. But
there are other ways of dealing with pervasive dark
states besides resisting them, suppressing them, or
trying to change the conditions seen as being
responsible for them. Instead of these acts of
willfulness, we choose in favor of watchfulness. Rather
than struggling with dark states, learning to be quietly
watchful of them does two things at once: first, it
separates us from being wrongly identified with our own
thoughts about that troublesome state. Second – by the
light of our newly liberated attention – we catch a
glimpse of a powerful insight whose light helps set us
free:
If we mistakenly give any
negative state its “life” – then the opposite must hold
true: we can consciously withdraw that same life any
time we so choose!
Here is a simple exercise to
help you get started with this new kind of seeing that
is the power behind freeing you. Several times each day,
whenever you can remember to do it, deliberately
disconnect yourself from your own thinking. Choose
awareness of your thoughts over being absorbed in the
sensations they produce as they carry you along to get
what they want. The aim here is simple: reclaim your
attention in order to be where you are, and then just
quietly notice all that you can about yourself. The
light of this new order of awareness empowers you to
catch and release what your own unattended thoughts had
been busy cooking up for you, using you as stock! Each
time you remember to reclaim your attention in this
manner, with it you regain your life. And here is a
bright bit of encouragement to help you get started. The
words that follow are those of Simone Weil, a brilliant
French writer, activist, and lover of the Light: “Even
if our efforts of attention seem for years to be
producing no result, one day a light that is in exact
proportion to them will flood the soul.”
© Copyright 2009.
Excerpted from The Essential Laws
of Fearless Living, Weiser Books, 2008
Guy Finley is the acclaimed
author of more than 30 books and audio programs on the
subject of self-realization, several of which have
become international best sellers. His popular works,
published in 16 languages, are widely endorsed by
doctors, professionals, and religious leaders of all
denominations. Among many others, his popular titles
include: The Secret of Letting Go, Design Your Destiny,
The Lost Secrets of Prayer, Apprentice of the Heart, Let
Go and Live in the Now, and The Essential Laws of
Fearless Living. Finley is the founder and director of
Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for
self-study located in Southern Oregon where he gives
talks four times each week. Visit
http://www.guyfinley.org for a wealth of free
helpful information, free audio and video downloads, and
to request your free Self-Improvement Starter Kit.
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