Attention is life

Ivan Campuzano                                                                                                                                    (edited by Ashley Mwanza with additional material)

OUR attention is one the most powerful things we possess. Whatever we pay attention to is what we become conscious of. Ultimately consciousness and attention is one and the same. Unfortunately we live in a world where our attention is so divided that we have become lost in life, we have lost ourselves. We don’t pay proper attention to ourselves so we end up living an unconscious life.

Attention is a vitamin. Many people receive this vitamin through love, relationships etc. What happens when your lover no longer pays you the same quality of attention? You start feeling empty, not loved, malnourished.

Attention can manifest as a loving presence. Plants can have the right soil, the right amount of water, sufficient light, but without a loving attention the plant can still die. We are no different, we can have a healthy body, but without giving the proper attention to the essential aspects of our being, we too will not truly feel alive.

If you are to love yourself, give attention to yourself. You need to understand a fundamental principle, which is that whatever you pay attention to will grow. If you pay attention to yourself, you’ll grow as a person.

If you pay attention to suffering, if you become identified to it, it will naturally grow. Unfortunately, when we take a penetrating look at where we place our attention, many of us come to find that a majority of it is spent on trivial things.

You need to clearly see that any feelings of being incomplete, of being unfulfilled, are not coming from without, but from within. Many of us try to fill this hole by give all our attention to worldly pursuits in hopes that it will make us feel whole, but we will only find what we are looking for if we move our attention inward.

Having money, success, and material possessions is really nice, nothing wrong with them, but ultimately what we are looking for is spiritual fulfillment. The longing to feel at peace is coming from the aspect ourselves that is non-physical so obviously it cannot be satisfied through physical means.

Learn to not pay wrong attention. Switch your attention when it’s needed, try to remember blissful moments, remember that it is possible for you to experience other states of being. People tend to always gather and remember their miseries, they forget their happy moments, and life then becomes a hell, a vicious circle of the same dramas.

The ultimate thing to give your attention to is your inner witness, because the witness is pure unconditioned attention, awareness. Merge with the witness (get to know who you really are).

When you were a kid your attention was focused on the only thing that existed, that is; the moment. Which means you accepted life as it is, you experienced life totally and fully. The ‘experiencer’ was not separate from the experience, you were the experience. This is why many people remember their childhood.

The more you learn to pay attention to your inner witness, the more you will feel your pure essential presence emerge, which simply means you are being present to yourself, you and the moment are one. When you are present to yourself, you are “being” yourself, which feels amazing, because in this state we recognize reality, we know who we are, we recognize what it is to be authentically alive.