Giving Attention

Today, the subject of giving attention came up. For one who has often patted herself on the back for multi-tasking, this is like entering new country. The real giving of my attention - to some thing or to some one - really touches me and I've become more aware of what it takes to do that over the past several months.

Giving attention requires me to lay aside judgments and criticisms. I can see that any thoughts about another that I hold while considering them is me giving my attention not to the person or thing, but to my thoughts. Giving attention touches me only when I open the whole of me to the whole of the one I am giving attention to. In the experience of this wholeness, whatever might have given rise to some kind of assessment is seen in its context - in the context of the whole of what receives my full attention. In that context, it is always small, often vanishingly small.

What replaces the act of looking with my mind is much more than its opposite, looking-for-what's-right. There is a mental, emotional and physical restfulness I experience in contemplating something or someone with full attention - even when they are not present. When we are physically proximate, we likely each experience this, even though a person can block out their awareness of that. And from my end, with that restfulness comes delight and enjoyment.

In beginning to integrate what Bruce Lipton has to say in The Biology of Belief - I've just finished my first listen to the 8+ hour lecture - I'm finding myself more able to tune into to subtleties within my body that accurately tell me what is really going on. There is a resonance that I cannot deny.

I'm seeing in me and in others, how much we really are dominated by the mindless tapes triggered from our past, and how that affects our entire world. I hadn't realized, prior to Lipton, how we took in, unfiltered and unedited, so much belief, before we were 7 years old, nor how powerful that subconsciousness is compared to our conscious mind. That is so worth knowing. And worth integrating.

We are not our tapes! We are not our beliefs. We have a conscious mind that can exercise choice. I love it. It is so worth living for.

The Seed's Song - A Celebration of Spring

THE SEED’S SONG ver. 4.4

I always knew that the way I saw myself –
All dry, stuck together, tight inside – was not what I was.
Deep down, I always knew.

And when the cold chill of winter began to lift –
I knew.
I knew change was coming.
Deep down, I always knew.

As my hard protective shell softened in the warming soil,
I felt a lovely stirring within me.
I realized I would change, but not how.
Deep down, I always knew.

That stirring within delighted me.
Something irresistible, strong, clean and clear arose,
A powerful moving inside my warming heart.
Deep down, I always knew.

The stirring continued – new parts of me took form,
So newly formed, yet somehow familiar.
Growing in beautiful and functional ways,
Deep down, I always knew.

Silently, the warming soil so gently cradling me,
Slipped aside under the pressure of my growing tip.
I was excited, now singing within.
Deep down, I always knew.

Suddenly I was touched by something
So warm, so gentle, so bright
That every cell, resonating, reminded me that
Deep down, I always knew.

My newness now nourished from the deep
And supported by the nurturing earth
Began to organize the whole of me.
Deep down, I always knew.

And so, my roots, my trunk, my branches, my leaves
Revealed what I am and have always been.
Deep down, I knew, I always knew,
I was a tree.

© Barbara Ashley Phillips 2007