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Turning Points Part 3: Control your attention
You can adapt declarations that you find… and you see that living consistent with that declaration would be consistent with living according to the Original Design.
What aspect of the Original Design? The aspect that says: you are made of the same thinking substance as Source itself is made of. You have the same kind of will Source has.
Does that make you equal to Source? No, not at all. Why?
- First off the amount of everything that you can see and know is what your cone of vision allows you to see. And for most of us, it is the dominion of the 1% world.
- Second: you have additional forces that operate in you and through you: the Ego and the Soul, and self-concern, and vanity, and more.
Although your design enables you to be the ‘boss’ of this entity, ego, soul, self, will, intention, attention, emotions, feelings, body, etc., few, if any humans know that they can be the boss. That their JOB is to be the boss.
And fewer yet have the courage, the energy, and the capacity/skill to truly wield the power that boss position gives them.
Some humans, through the history of humans have had insights.
Unfortunately insights are a dime a dozen: just because you see something, you don’t necessarily live consistent with the knowledge. You may not even know how to turn that insight into effective action.
People who live consistent with the power innate to humans look like magicians, like wizards, like special beings.
Your design is the same, you are just too puny, too slothful, too cowardly, too resistant to learn how to use your power.
But no matter where you are on the scale you can adapt some insights from those who saw them.
Two of my favorites that I have turned into organizing principles for myself… meaning: I live that way:
‘Don’t look backwards unless you want to go that way.‘ ~ Thoreau.
Of course most people don’t know what it means. That probably includes you.
If we consider backwards anything that is a past, then all the Tree of Knowledge belongs to it. All the information that you so diligently search in your head. So diligently that you miss what is being said, what is happening now.
- What you are searching for belongs to the past.
- Your personal history belongs to the past.
- Your feelings belong to the past: once you feel it it is already the past.You consider most interactions a threat to you. How come?
- Because you look in the past to interpret the action… so you went to the past to get information about the present.
But, past experience is not determinant to your present or future experience.
If you recognize it, you went to the past. You recognize it because you know you have seen it before.
Recognition, by definition, means that you went to the past to compare what’s now with what was in the past. What if there is no connection? What if you are misidentifying what is now?
When we go to work, who is waiting for us are the people who haven’t changed since yesterday. We know who they are, and how do we know it? We look in the past.
When we go home, who is there? Yesterday’s husband, mother, boy friend, in a word, the past.
We are trying to get to a destination different from where life is heading by gluing our eyes to the past. much like driving a car with our eyes on the rear-view mirror. dangerous, don’t you think?
- ‘There is never any hurry on the creative plane‘ ~ Wallace D. Wattles
This statement seems the opposite of the Thoreau statement:
Wallace D. Wattles addresses our hurry to get into the future. To the next step.
You are so hellbent to get to the other side, you miss your life. Joy and happiness, a job well done, satisfaction, serenity, peace, well being is all in the present: your habit of rushing through life is costing you your life.
When you drive home from work, like a maniac, and miss being where you are, whether it is a traffic jam, whether noticing that the sky is so incredibly beautiful above you, you miss your life.
You say: I’ll be well, satisfied, happy (fill in the blank) once I get… blah blah blah.
Our most precious commodity is our attention. You have 100% control of it, at least, by design.
The reality is grim: most of you are in control of your attention about 1-2-3% of the time.
Your attention and your will are intimately connected.
Your will that can shape and create your actions and your disposition for you is what we are talking about here.
If your grasp on your attention is weak, is it any wonder that people are ignorant, sick, depressed, poor, ineffective, and unhappy?
Just committing to statements, like the two above, statements that can alter how you use your attention can change your life. Completely. If you bring integrity to that commitment. Not a campaign, not a homework… lifetime commitment.
wonderful. great laboratory for growth
I have found, this week especially, that I can take a moment to get present when a person is approaching and really connect. (I am a doorman, and I usually see a person from a little distance before they get to the door.)
Okay, the connection is very brief, but I see the power and choice I have to create a moment. I’m not sure just what I’m doing. I am dropping my guard, being human, being emotionally available, offering some part if myself. That’s my secret job behind my job. I practice connecting, and being willing to connect. And then I let it go.
It’s a little bit of a BS story I tell myself about how creative I would be if I did not have to work 8 hours a day. I have not yet mastered my actual free time, only my virtual free time.
Is being a rock star better than being a doorman? My door-fans can get close enough to smell me and see the whites if my eyes. And I give them the mesmerizing gaze for free! No wonder I am so well-loved. Yes, you may have my autograph.
Thank you my foxy friend.
What another great work of art Sophie! Very Original Design. Thank You. The sky is so incredibly beautiful above you. And I would like the same.