Inner Work

For the week of September 29, 2008

Intentional Attention

To become our Self, our true spirit, we need to become our will. But the term “will” carries a rather fuzzy, confusing, and contradictory set of meanings. On top of that, we cannot perceive will, because our will is the perceiver. Saying that I am my will leaves us in the same conundrum, because the notion of I is just as fuzzy and elusive a concept as will. But if we speak of attention or intention, then we address aspects of will that are more recognizable, more tractable. We know by direct experience what it means to pay attention and also what it means to have intention.

Attention comes in several flavors. The most common is a lack of attention, like when we are lost in a daydream. Another form occurs when our attention is passively drawn to something, such as the TV, an interesting sight, or a physical pain. But for many of our life endeavors as well as for our spiritual inner work, the type of attention that matters is intentional attention: paying attention and choosing to do so.

The term “paying attention” carries the implication of effort. And indeed it takes an inner effort to direct and hold our attention on something. With practice, though, the effort becomes easier, primarily because less of it is wasted. Just as an athlete learns to be very efficient in expending energy, minimizing wasted motion, so with practice we pay attention efficiently. We come to understand attention and how to direct and hold it.

Directing our attention is an intentional act. If we say that we are after intentional attention, though, we mean more than just directing our attention. We place our attention with the whole our intention behind that act of placing. A further step and we realize that intention need not be too specific to be real and potent. For example, we can practice the will-to-be, intending simply to be here and now, fully and wholly, to be aware of our whole body, to be the one who sees and lives, to inhabit our life at this moment. This will-to-be, though general, embraces all the details and specifics of our life.

Intentional attention carries us well beyond the level of autopilot living, and even beyond the level of sensitive contact, into the realm of conscious living. When we are our self, we are conscious. And when we enter the conscious energy, we are our self. Intentional attention operates by means of the conscious energy, that vast, silent, cognizing substance. Intentional attention raises our conscious energy out of its hiding place of being submerged in and mixed with our sensitive energy.

So our work with this is to pay attention, to be the one who is paying attention, and to do it with our full intention. We feel “I am attending to this,” whatever this object of attention is. In our spiritual practice the object of attention might the sensitive energy in our body, the air we are breathing, or a heartfelt prayer, to name just a few examples. But for this way of intentional attention, the object of attention could also be anything else in our life: the dishes we are washing, the food we are eating, these words we are reading, the conversation we are having, and yes, even the TV we are watching. The practice is to do what we are doing with full attention and the full intention to be here doing it.

For this week, practice intentional attention.

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