Paying Attention

 

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Paying Attention

When one observes great artists – painters, dancers, singers, sculptors, writers, composers, poets, etc – and the ordinary person, the difference is of the power of attention. The ordinary person lacks attention whereas the artists have that power. Someone can shoot straight and someone cannot. Why? Lack of attention. From the simplest to the highest things, it is just lack of attention.

Whatever attention level we have right now is not all that is possible. There is more but that is still redundant, it is still in an un-manifest state where we do not have access to it. So, at least we must pay all of what we have. But even with our mental attention, we are at different levels of attention at different times of our life and at different times of the day. If we are doing our work, we are in one level of attention. If we are in meditation, we are in a different level of attention. If we are eating something that we like very much, we are in a different level of attention. Our levels of attention are different at different times, and whatever the peak attention that we have had in our life at any time, that is still not all of it. We are capable of much more attention.

We should try an experiment and find out for ourselves our levels of attention. If possible, find a tunnel or a cave, or any large hall with which we are not familiar; ensure that it is pitch dark and start walking, initially there will be fear as the mind rebels and throws up all kind of dark thoughts, but as we continue walking, we notice that we have heightened levels of attention, we actually start seeing in the dark. If we can keep our attention like this every moment of our lives, then we will begin to glow. We will really glow.

We should see for ourselves our levels of attention, do we observe untidiness and immediately set it right, do we observe the beauty of nature – whether it is trees, flowers, the sky, the birds, and insects and so on. If we bring this attention to a peak, if we learn to have a heightened sense of attention, then we can slowly learn as to what we must and what we should not attend to within ourselves.

If we become very attentive, we can look at how to make use of that attentiveness. Spirituality happens only because we paid attention to our life and we saw that we don’t know where it begins and where it ends. We are going about it as if whatever we are doing is the be all and end all of life. The moment we pay a little attention, we understand “This is not it.”

So, the very first step of even thinking spiritual came to us only because of a certain level of attention. If we pay much more attention to everything, if we heighten our ability to be attentive, that could be used in miraculous ways.