Your Attention Is A Blessing
We have just gathered again in The Heart of Being Human monthly meditation group. The group is still finding its form, but it is rooted in one simple, sacred intention: to come together and remember what matters most.
This month’s session focused on something deeply fragile and deeply powerful: our attention.
I began by naming the truth that’s so easy to forget:
The quality of your life, is determined by your attention. Where your attention goes, your life flows.
As I learned from a client recently, you can be on a beach in Saint-Tropez with your family and still feel sad and lonely. This particular client was on the beach checking Snapchat Maps, which shows you all the people you are not with. Engineered FOMO. Stories like this remind us how easily technology hijacks not just our focus, but our experience of reality.
What Pulls Us Away
As a group, we named many forces that pull or sap our attention. Did we miss anything?:
Phones, notifications, digital media
The weight of to-do lists in our heads
The pressure to respond instantly to every compulsive thought (‘must check the weather’, ‘must respond to the 100th message’ etc)
The constant noise of family life
The intrusion of other people’s needs, maybe even people we are not that close to
And perhaps most powerfully:
The subtle belief that we’re not quite in the right place,
that in this moment right now, there just might be a better place for our attention to be.
This last one felt especially important to name.
Simone Weil, and Attention as Prayer
We paused to reflect on a quote from Simone Weil:
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.”
We spoke about how, in a world built on fake fear and false urgency, these words are fuel for quiet revolution.
To choose where to place our attention, not reactively, but reverently, is to begin reclaiming our power. And our peace.
Two participants shared that since the pandemic they have reclaimed their attention from the the news, as they woke up the the powers that be that are trying to keep us in a permanent state of fear with flashing red headlines.
Developing the courage to say no to these assaults on our attention and our nervous system is part of what this space is about.
🧘 The Practice: Attention as a Blessing
We practiced seeing attention not as a task, or chore, but as a blessing.
Wherever we place our attention - our breath, our body, our loved ones, a tree - we are saying to that thing (and to ourselves): this matters.
We practiced training our attention like a puppy: gently, firmly bringing it back when it wanders.
And we brought our attention to our hearts, and connect with gratitude and grief, a practice inspired by the grief teacher Francis Weller who says: “The work of a mature human being is to hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other.”
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Finally, we brought our attention to reflect on what matters most to us.
At the end of the session, each person named one thing they are committing to blessing with their attention in the coming month. These things included nature, friendships, and Love.
Carrying It Forward
As we closed, we spoke about the importance of communities of practice, safe spaces where we can unplug from the madness of this world, and bring our attentions back to what matters most.
Here’s a mantra you might carry with you over the coming month.
✨ Where I place my attention, I plant a blessing.
Until next time.
May your attention be yours.
May your presence be a prayer.
With Love,
Louis
🫀 The Heart of Being Human