Weekly Soul: Week 20 - Quality of Attention
Today's meditation from Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living by Dr. Frederic Craigie.
-20-
Deepak Chopra
Achieving artistic and financial success
by the early 1890s, Claude Monet purchased his home in Giverny, France and set
to work developing a landscape that would inspire his painting in the last 30
years of his life. He received permission from local authorities to divert
water from the Epte River to create a pond for cultivating water lilies. Monet
spent long hours in his gardens, tending to them, and joyfully observing the
constant unfolding of light, colors, and texture. He commented on his attention
to his lily pond:
It took me a while to understand my water
lilies. I cultivated them without thinking about painting them. A landscape
doesn’t captivate you in just one day. And then, all of a sudden, I had a
revelation: there was magic in my pond. I seized my palette. Since that moment,
I’ve scarcely painted any other subject.
Monet
paid attention to his water lilies and they became—suddenly, magically—vitally
important in his life.
Mindfulness means paying attention in this
present moment. What we attend to grows. Where, then, do we direct attention?
Traditionally, the meditative practices part of mindfulness have involved directing
attention to some point of focus. You may focus on your breath, a sacred word
or phrase, or an image—leaves flowing on the soft current of a stream—and
gently return your attention to this point of focus as your mind moves in other
directions. There are centuries of healing narratives and hundreds of modern
research explorations about the health and spiritual benefits of such
practices.
Mindfulness as a life practice is involves both directing and inviting attention.
Inviting mindful attention
means using all of your senses to be aware of the richness of your experience
in this moment. For years, I’ve been teaching people what I call the “12
Things” exercise. You pause and quietly observe 12 things in your present
experience: the feel of the chair where you’re sitting; the temperature; ff
you’re outside, perhaps a gentle breeze; the sound of voices in the hall or of
a car passing by in the distance; the smell of springtime, the ocean, or your
neighbor’s barbecued ribs (vegetarians; imagine grilled leeks); and the
awareness of thoughts (“Oh, isn’t it interesting that I’m having the thought
that I need to pick up milk on the way home!”). Twelve, of course, is
arbitrary; the exercise invites a succession of experiences that come to you as
you are curiously and observantly present and aware.
Directing mindful attention
as a life practice means that you choose the parts of your experience to which
you open your mind and your heart.
You can allow your attention to go to
troubled emotions, past or future. You can allow your attention to go to the
morning news of yet another school shooting, devastating flood, or precipitous
drop in the Dow-Jones stock index. You can listen to the voices—I suspect we
all have these voices—that tell you you’re not good enough, or you can rehearse
scenes of how you might exact retribution on someone who has wounded you.
Or, as a discipline to bring your heart
back to a healing place, you can direct your attention to who you really are
and what is sacred for you. “This is what surrounds me in my world right now. This
is who I am and who I want to be.”
What you attend to grows more important in
your life. Monet’s attention to his lily pond brought a revelation. Maybe
mindful attention has some magic in store for you, as well.
Reflection
Use all of your senses to notice your experience in this moment. What do you see, hear, and feel? Are you aware of particular scents or aromas? What do you notice outside of you, and what do you mindfully observe of thoughts, feelings, and images inside of you?
- Recognize that you have
choices in where you will direct your attention in this present moment. As
several clients have asked, what parts of your experience you want to
“feed?” Where do you want to
direct your attention and your heart?
- Pause a few times in the coming days to sit with the inviting (being aware of your experience) and directing (choosing where you want to focus your attention) aspects of mindfulness as a life practice.
Author
Deepak
Chopra, M.D. (b. 1946) is an American physician, writer, speaker, and
entrepreneur. He received a medical degree in India, where he was born,
emigrated to the United States, and completed residency training in internal
medicine and endocrinology. He practiced conventional Western medicine for a
number of years before becoming disenchanted with its emphasis on
pharmaceutical treatment and what he perceived as its limited scope of care. Chopra
met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, himself an early exponent of meditative practices in
America, and partnered with in in developing the Maharishi Ayurveda Health
Center and an affiliated business that marketed alternative health care
products. He parted company with the Maharishi in the early 1990s, moved to
California to direct the Sharp Institute for Human Potential and Mind/Body
Medicine, and subsequently founded the Chopra Center for Well Being. His first
of a long run of best-selling books, Quantum Healing: Exploring the
Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine, was published in 1989. In recent years,
Chopra’s writing and speaking have explored the role in healing of
consciousness and quantum physics, and he has become prominent for his belief
in the limitless potential of human wellness, healing, and aging. His work is
certainly not without controversy, with some followers seeing him as a
harbinger of a revolutionary approach to healing and some detractors seeing him
as a New Age charlatan and criticizing his lucrative business of alternative
medicine products and services. The quotation comes from Chopra’s book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum
Alternative to Growing Old, (Harmony, 1993).
Book Description:
Keywords:
meditation; reflection; inspiration; miracles; aliveness; purpose; laughter; joy; presence; mindfulness; activism; acceptance; gratitude; forgiveness; creativity; civility; hope; affirmation; wholeness; well-being; mental health; personal growth; transformation; inner peace; personal reflection; joy; joyful living; inspirational quotes; inspirational commentary
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