Your Attention Is Power
Will you consciously wield that power?
We live in an attention economy.
Think about it.
Your attention is one of the most valuable things within that reality.
Even if you don’t believe that, look at the practical facts.
Companies, political campaigns, even nonprofit fundraisers are paying MILLIONS of dollars to grab your attention. Every day. In every moment.
If they’re willing to pay that much for your attention… you can see that your attention must be worth quite a lot… yes?
So.
We know we’ve got tons of entities out there vying for — and paying for — our attention. They’re using all the psychology and tricks in the book. They’re doing everything they can to catch our attention… and to hold it.
And how will you respond?
Will you let them treat you like a Pavlovian dog? Or will you claim your own power, to actively and consciously direct your attention?
You have the power to choose.
We’re a bit addicted to feeling powerless, in our current culture.
Perhaps it is comforting to feel powerless, somehow. Perhaps we don’t want the responsibility of power. Perhaps life is simpler, if we can imagine that only the people with certain titles or positions have power… while we’re totally powerless.
Those things may be true.
But it’s not true that we’re powerless.
We have profound power.
And that power lies in our attention.
Your Attention Is Your Life
How you spend your attention is how you spend your life.
Spend a minute watching TV, you are spending your life force on TV.
Spend a minute watching a melodramatic argument, and you are likely spending both that minute of your life force… plus whatever amount of minutes after that that you are affected by the energy of people screaming at each other.
Spend a minute totally focused on a child. You are spending your life force in building meaningful relationship bonds… and growing love.
Spend a minute reading a book. You are spending your life force on learning about the world around you, and/or other peoples’ experiences that are different than yours, and/or you are entering into an entirely different world to expand your perception and experience of being human.
Spend a minute in nature. You are likely helping yourself feel more connected to all of life around you and within you.
And so on.
How you spend your attention is quite literally how you are spending your life. So are you making the decision about where you put your attention consciously? Or are you just unconsciously letting your attention swing from thing to thing, chaotically?
Are you letting your life story be written by whatever manages to grab and wrestle away your attention, in this attention economy?
Or are you writing your own story?
What You Put Your Attention On Grows
Our attention is like fertilizer, in the world of creation.
What we put our attention on grows and flourishes.
You can see this all around you, if you look for it. Like various projects around your home, or at work. Like in a garden. Like with anything creative.
Want something to grow and flourish?
Pay attention to it.
Want it to atrophy?
Stop paying attention to it.
Remember this spiritual truth, in the coming years, as a world leader comes to power who thrives on attention and craves it like a drug.
ALL attention — whether positive or negative — is food for this one. And thus a lack of attention is like starving.
So what happens if humans refuse to give him their attention?
My hypothesis?
He shrivels like a flower without sun, without water, without compost. He has no life force to help him flourish, because he is completely disconnected from that Life source inside him, and in the world around him, in his ego-based self-centeredness.
This would be true for others like him, too, incidentally.
Our attention is the sun.
Where will we shine those life-giving rays?
Your Attention Is Love
Think about how it feels to be the center of someone’s attention, when they’re at peace and care for us.
Amazing. Right?
Isn’t that one of the purest experiences of love?
Contemplating this will help you realize something: our mere attention is love. Our focused presence is love. When we are present, without the distraction of anything else, including emotions like fear, or anger, or envy, or impatience, we are love.
So.
How are you spending that currency of love… that is simply your presence?
Where are you devoting your attention?
Are you consciously choosing where you love in this way?
Your Attention Is Power
Everything we’ve been discussing here brings one unified message: you have the power to determine your experience, and to determine the reality that is created in this material world, by where you place your attention.
You have the power to write the story of your life.
You have the power to help something grow or not grow.
You have the power to spread love when and where you think it’s needed, by where you devote your attention.
Many in my circles are dreading the four years to come, with a new federal government forming that is much of the same crew that brought us chaos… violence… and breath-taking cruelty, the last time they were in power.
These folks are talking resistance now.
Of course.
They don’t want to let the chaos, violence, and cruelty win. They don’t want to let those things be the reality that we all experience.
I don’t want that, either.
And here’s the thing.
One of the most powerful ways we can resist… is by withdrawing our attention.
Sure, we need to pay some attention. But not like we’re rubber-necking a car wreck and can’t peel our eyes away — which is how many of us responded in the past.
Withdrawing our attention is an alternative form of resistance — and it’s one that, rather than fueling whatever you’re resisting by directly opposing it, and thus calling more attention to it, drains it of its power.
We need to be smart about this.
We need to use our power like this.
We need to shift power like this.
We can’t let the various powers-that-be “play” us like those Pavlovian dogs, or like some kind of psychological game they’ve mastered.
We need to be in charge.
Of ourselves.
Of our attention.
Remember: no matter where your body is, or what it is experiencing, your attention will always have free reign.
You get to choose where it goes.
Your body could be imprisoned, or in pain. And yet your attention could take you on flights to worlds far away — far away from that body.
Your attention is your power.
Your attention is your life.
Do you want to live in chaos? Let your attention bounce around chaotically.
Do you want to feel your cortisol spike several times a day, as stress courses through your entire system? Especially as a federal government we’ve already experienced as chaotic returns to power? Pay close attention to every drama they create, every day.
OR… stay focused on the alternative reality you are creating. One foot in front of the other, bit by bit, moment by moment. They’re going to create the reality they’re going to create. And the best way to oppose it is to create an alternative that is so much better that you capture others’ attention with it.
And… when things arise that we need to actively oppose?
We’ll know. We’ll know. We don’t need to stay on high alert for those moments. Word will get to us. Trust.
Want to live in love? Focus on love.
Want to live in peace? Focus on peace.
Want to live in joy? Focus on joy.
Your attention and focus will bring these realities to life for you… and it will then direct you to take material, practical actions that will increase that reality for yourself, and others, and the whole world.
Between Sunrise and Sunset
These human lives we’re living are largely happening between sunrises and sunsets.
And you know what I’ve noticed about both sunrises and sunsets?
If we happen to be outside during one of these natural phenomena — ones that happen literally every day — we humans almost cannot help but pay attention to them. No one has created that conditioning in us. And it’s not exactly rational, because why would something that happens literally every day be worth pausing to pay attention to… really?
Why, indeed?
A deep part of us knows that it is inherently connected to the natural world — that we are nature, that we live in an interconnected web of life, within the natural world.
And the beauty we see in the sunrise… or sunset… helps re-connect us to that knowing within us.
Pausing to be with a sunrise, or sunset, is thus an immensely valuable way for us to spend our precious life force.
And here’s the most important question for us to answer for ourselves, then:
How are we spending our precious life between the sunrise and sunset?
To answer that question, I need to ask another one:
Where are we directing our attention?
The answer to THAT question…
… answers the one above it.
With Love,
Cecelia 💗