"Paying" Attention?
Where does attention come from? What do we mean when we use the phrase “pay attention”?
When I encounter questions about the meaning and use of words, I often find it instructive to look to their origin and development. The word attention derives from the Latin tendere, which means “to stretch”. From Old French to Middle English to attend came to mean “applying one’s mind or energies toward something”. At some point in the mid 16th century, the legal term tender was used as a way to “formally offer a plea or evidence, or money to discharge a debt”.
We tend gardens, wounds, children - stretching our hands and hearts and minds forth to those things we perceive as important and delicate and worthy of care. Yet, at some point, we started using the same word in a way that reflected the influences of capitalism, commerce, and debt. Changes in language reflect changes in thought. The world was changing in the mid 16th century as exploration in new lands coincided with the rise of mercantilism, which was the predecessor of the capitalism we know today.
As the world changes again we see the competition for resources shift from physical commodities (land, oil, metal) to the commodity of information. The types and amount of data that are streamed and collected in the information economy must surely exceed the material wealth that can be extracted from the earth. This recognition has given rise to an attention economy, powered by technology, and expanding ever more rapidly.
It is something so powerful that it hides in plain sight, so dangerous that authority wants to control it at any cost, and so valuable that it is given, for free, to every conscious being.
In the process of witnessing my own use of language, the inquiry arose “why do we use the phrase ‘paying attention’?” Attention is something we can bring, capture, give, and lose. It has immense value as it creates the frame in which and through which we perceive ourselves, each other, and the world around us. It represents the light of awareness that directs the most precious resource we have and the only thing that we can truly claim with sovereignty. It is something so powerful that it hides in plain sight, so dangerous that authority wants to control it at any cost, and so valuable that it is given, for free, to every conscious being.
The next time you decide to “pay” attention to someone or something, I invite you to consider whether the exchange of value in such a “transaction” is in alignment with how you want to use your attention. We do not get paid for the extraordinary amount of data we disclose to our devices in the form of our attention. There are ways to engage with technology more consciously, but it takes discipline and having tools can help. I have found the resources at The Center for Humane Technology to be useful in this practice.
It is an aspect of biological life to consume resources and information. How we focus our attention plays a profound role not just in how we perceive the world, but in how we co-create reality as it unfolds. Using language consciously and creatively will influence thought, thoughts influence perspective, and perspective influences behavior. Take care when consuming. Your information diet will affect your health no less than the foods you eat. May you tend well and be well tended. Thank you for your attention.
The Season of Transform
Have you felt it?
This year, the influx of energy that accompanies the onset of Spring seems to be super-charged. There is a quality of density and richness, which can at times feel like trying to drink from an open fire hydrant. The art of being able to navigate, integrate, and harness the abundance of this energy is having a strategy and a practice.
Within the paradigm of Reorganizational Healing, the “Four Seasons of Wellbeing” reflect an individual’s level of readiness for change at a particular moment in time. Stepping into the Season of Transform means changing the relationship to the body, to how energy is utilized, how attention is focused, and how movement flows in both thought and action. It describes a state in which energy is readily available and strategies are in place that allow for the constructive channeling of this energy.
The strategy is the plan of action. What are some things that you have identified or that are asking/demanding you to re-evaluate how you are living? For me, this looks like changing my exercise routine, adding to and improving my diet, incorporating more self-care, claiming which areas of study and which opportunities to concentrate on and which to politely decline. There was never a more accurate tea tag than the one I recently read: “Energy flows where attention goes.” The strategy is the container that you create to channel where this Transform energy goes. It allows you to consciously have a say in directing the engine of change. The practice is simply employing the strategy. It won’t be perfectly executed. That’s why it’s called practice.
And so, in the spirit of the season, I’ve crafted a Spring “To-Do” List. May it be as useful to you as the tea tag was for me.
- Harness the abundant energy of the season to consciously drive change.
- Plant intention.
- Water it with congruent action.
- Tend it with refinement as it grows into form.
- Remember: the Field is fertile.
A Conscious Imperative
"Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected...as the old consciousness dissolves, there are bound to be synchronistic geographic and climatic natural upheavals in many parts of the planet, some of which we are witnessing now." --Eckhart Tolle
It has been snowing ash in Portland. For the past few days, stepping outside to afternoon temperatures near 100 degrees, into a haze thick and grey has been akin to stepping into a sauna that is burning campfire wood with the flue closed. Instead of the cloudless blue of summer, or the cool grey overcast of the rest of the year, the sky has taken on a white density. Folks walk around with bandannas and face masks, there are minimal bikers on the road, and few people are outside. It feels more like fallout than school season. As the West burns, the Gulf of Mexico floods, and the eastern seaboard braces for increasingly strong hurricanes.
We are now in the Anthropocene, the time when humans are aware of and can objectively measure the extent to which their activities have an impact on the planet. The brilliant human intelligence that has led to the technology and development of modernity has also served to amplify the destructive capability that unconsciousness has on life. On an individual level, allowing the ego to drive thought and action leads to fear, greed, and the desire for power. The ego is fueled by attachment to form - because it cannot feel, it must have. At the root of this is the false premise that humans are somehow separate from or even superior to Nature. Humans, like all of the other life on this planet are of Nature. Viewed from this perspective, the health and sanity of our individual thoughts and actions contributes to the health and sanity of our collective thoughts and actions.
The intrinsic connection Mr. Tolle refers to is how the state of collective human consciousness is being reflected in the material world it inhabits. As the quantitative impact of humanity continues to increase, it is more important than ever to look at the quality of this impact. What are our thoughts and actions doing to ourselves, each other, and the environment?
One of my yoga teachers recently shared that the current darkness and perceived chaos happening in the world is not necessarily the darkness of the tomb; that instead it could be the darkness of the womb. An opportunity - and at this stage an imperative - for humanity to birth itself out of the darkness it has created from living unconsciously.
