Attention

The basic core of all true spiritual teachings is that the inner determines the outer. What this timeless idea means to us is that what we receive from life -- our experience of self in life -- is determined by how we perceive events. And how we see life is determined, each moment, by what we are looking at it through.

Where is the border between conscience and unconsciousness? The reason the world is beyond repair is because it is populated by a race of beings that now believe that they are conscious. They are not conscious; you are not conscious. The proof that you are not conscious is that you hurt one another, that's the proof of it. And that you hurt yourself, that's the proof of it. Every time you talk to yourself, every time you punish yourself...

Our attention is precious. Our attention may be the most important thing that we own, and almost none of us own any of our own attention. Anybody can take it. A phone call can take it. The news can take it. Look in the mirror and it can be stolen. I'm looking in the mirror and I don't look anything like I'm supposed to look, and if I look in the mirror and I don't see what I like, where does my attention go?

In a moment of crisis, would you say that you're easy-going? Are you wide-open and joyous to be with? Or, in a crisis, would you say you're about as tense as a human being could possibly be? Isn't that true? The more tense you are through resistance, the more negative you become. The more negative you become, the more resistance resists itself. And the more you resist yourself, the more tense you become. So you run left, you run right...

Looking at life through the eyes of resistance is not unlike looking at our own reflection in a pool of troubled waters; everything gets distorted. In fact, when seeing our lives through the narrow bars of some unwanted state, nothing is the way we see it.

Our work, in terms of reclaiming our right as human beings to be in relationship with what we choose to be in relationship with, begins with being able to see that we suffer because choices are made for us. And it's an unnecessary suffering.

The only thing that really troubles us is that our attention doesn't belong to us. Presently, something calls for us and claims our attention. Every errant thought and feeling that passes through our psychic system commands that we attend to what it tells us to, and then tries to direct us to what we have to discover based on resistance to the moment produced by our misplaced attention...

The better we understand the unique power of being "passive"- and how it serves as the secret consort of all things active - the more we grow in the faith we need to be wisely passive toward whatever fears remain in us about letting go of our false self. This is why we should take time each day -- as often as possible -- to quietly return to the living Light that dwells in the...

You may want to think about this for the rest of your life... and I'm not kidding. The need for a lesson to be learned attracts the condition it requires to be fulfilled. Do you see how benevolent is the Creator (whatever word you want to give to it)? Because look, how many of you think to yourself, "Oh joy, here comes a lightning bolt! Here comes a lesson!" No. When lessons come..."

In this life we are only given two things that are purely our own to use: attention and time. Sadly, most of us squander our gifts of time and attention. Rather than learning to be in command of our attention, which is the same as using our time for its highest purpose -- the realization of our immortal Self -- we hand it over to almost anything that floats by in the river of time. Either we...

You possess unsuspected powers of perception just waiting to be awakened. The following technique will help you get started with this awakening of the Free Mind.

Bound up as we are within the closed world of our own thoughts, we see virtually nothing other than what the false self of the moment wants us to see. By contrast, in real life, everything is new.