What Am I Paying Attention To?

Last week we asked a simple question: What Am I Making Room For?

 We considered the possibility that creativity, clarity, and Inner Wisdom may not always require us to add something more to our lives. Sometimes we need to make room—to pause, practice vairagya (non-attachment), and become receptive. But once we have made room, another important question naturally arises: What am I paying attention to?

There is an old and very useful observation: Where attention goes, energy flows. Attention is one of the most valuable resources we possess. Wherever we repeatedly place our attention, we are also investing something of our creative energy. And yet we often spend that valuable resource without realizing we are spending anything at all.

We answer an email while listening to someone speak. We eat while reading the news. We carry on a telephone conversation while looking at something on a computer. We begin one task, notice another, remember a third, and within moments our attention—and our energy—have traveled in several different directions.

We call this multitasking. It can even seem like an accomplishment. But are we really doing several things at once? Is that even possible? Or are we rapidly moving our attention from one object to another? Every shift of attention requires energy. Repeated again and again, that constant switching can leave the mind fatigued, anxious and increasingly unable to sustain the one-pointed attention that makes clear and creative thinking possible.

To find out where your attention goes, try a simple experiment.

The next time you’re in conversation with someone, notice where your attention is. Are you actually listening? Or, while the other person is speaking, are you preparing your response? Perhaps you are remembering something that happened yesterday. Perhaps you are wondering what time it is. Perhaps a sound in the room has captured your attention. Perhaps you are thinking about the next thing you need to do. The person may still be speaking. You may even be looking directly at them. But where are you?

Yoga Science asks us to become students of our own attention. Not to criticize ourselves. Not to force the mind into submission. Simply to witness. What am I paying attention to?

Where Are the Saber-Toothed Tigers?

There is a very good reason our attention is so easily captured by possible danger.

Self-Preservation is one of the Four Primitive Fountains—along with Food, Sex and Sleep—that instinctively influence animal and human behavior. For our ancestors, immediately noticing a possible threat could mean the difference between life and death. The saber-toothed tiger deserved their attention.

But where are the saber-toothed tigers today?

They may appear as a troubling headline, an unexpected email, a notification on the phone, a difficult conversation, a financial concern, an imagined future—or simply another anxious thought.

The tiger has changed. The instinct to pay attention has not.

And in a world capable of presenting us with potential “tigers” every waking moment, Self-Preservation can repeatedly call our attention away from whatever is actually before us.

Yoga Science does not ask us to eliminate this primitive instinct. Self-Preservation has an important purpose. But we can learn to witness its influence rather than automatically surrender our attention to every alarm it  sounds.

An impulse may ask for our attention. But it does not have to determine where we place it.

One-Pointed Attention

One of the practical disciplines of Yoga Science is one-pointed attention—the ability to place our attention on one object and keep returning it there.

AMI Meditation® provides us an opportunity to practice this every day. We give our attention to the mantra. Then another thought appears. We become aware that our attention has followed it. And we lovingly return the mind back to the mantra. Again and again––for the perfect harmonic of the mantra continuously brings us love, fearlessness and strength.

Therefore, there is no need for irritation or judgment. The return itself is the practice. Each return strengthens our capacity to conserve and consciously direct our creative energy, rather than allowing our attention to be continually redirected by every thought, desire, memory, sensation, notification, fear, or habit that appears in the mind.

Gradually, attention becomes less scattered. Energy becomes less scattered. The instrument becomes more refined.

Attention and the Bridge of Yoga

Last week we considered silence as a condition of receptivity. Silence does not manufacture wisdom. It makes room for wisdom to be recognized. But recognizing Inner Wisdom also requires attention.

The super-conscious, intuitive wisdom reflected by the Conscience does not necessarily arrive at the same volume as messages from the Ego, Senses, or Unconscious mind. Habit can be loud. Fear can be loud. Desire can be loud. Our likes and dislikes can be very loud.

Inner Wisdom may be quieter. If our attention is continually being pulled from one stimulus to another, we may simply fail to notice what is already available to us.

This is one reason one-pointed attention is so valuable. It helps refine the instrument through which Inner Wisdom can be recognized and then carried across the Bridge of Yoga into our thoughts, words, and deeds.

And perhaps, occasionally, you will notice an insight or possibility that could not easily be recognized while attention was scattered.

We cannot command creativity. We cannot order Inner Wisdom to appear according to our schedule. But we can refine the instrument.

Last week we practiced making room. This week we can experiment with what happens when, having made that room, we give something the increasingly rare gift of our undivided attention and creative energy.

But there is an even deeper reason to undertake this experiment.

Where attention goes, energy flows.

What repeatedly attracts our attention receives our energy. What receives our energy is strengthened. And over time, what we desire, attend to, and serve helps shape our choices, our actions—and ultimately the life we create.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad expresses this profound truth:

“You are your deepest driving desire.
As your deepest driving desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.”

This is why the seemingly simple practice of directing attention is so consequential. Moment by moment, relationship by relationship, we are not merely observing the world. Through what we desire, attend to, and serve with our energy, we are participating in its creation.

As Swami Rama of the Himalayas taught:

“You are the architect of your life.”

So the question is not merely whether we are paying attention.

Rather, it is a question worthy of asking again and again:

What Am I Paying Attention To?

Meet the author