Attention please...

... And we think we are paying attention. Well we are, but maybe not to things or thoughts that could be of good use to us. We probably are paying attention towards the wrong direction. But we think we own the will to decide where our focus should be, and we are so wrong on that...

Our will takes us to where our mind has its attention. If you keep focusing on your wrongs and faults, your will will be to surpass them, but your horizon will always be settling on those same problems. Unless something disrupts our chain of thought we are more likely to look at things according to the the same known perspective, over and over... 

So if our will is to feel free, we immediately ask of what, free of what? And of course we name what we think it imprison us and that's where our attention will rest, on the thing we are scared of, on the thing we want to change, on what hurts us.

To stop any process and really open ourselves to change, growth and expansion we need to change our attention. Why do we grow the way we do when in Life we are sweetly presented with children? They grab our attention! Not our will or wishes. They grab our attention.

Attention, pure contemplative practice.

Simone Weil, philosopher in the 1920-30s spoke to us about the importance of having a mind that embraces grace and takes the time to incorporate it in our thoughts and actions

"We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will. (...) Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer."

Most things in our life are imagined by us. Reality is not that well known to the majority of us, so we are too easily deceived by what we imagine it's the truth to everyone else. No one will see the world the same way you do. The closest thing we can share is empathy.

Reality is that almost unprovable thing, and even in laboratoires, it's usually proven by its contrary. And we don't live in a laboratory, we live in homes, and friends arms, and work desks, we live attached to whatever has shown to give us meaning about who we are.

"Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached."

But we need roots, and attachment... we need meaning and belonging, "(...) for when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation."

Just remember that where you focus your attention that will be where you are lead.