Self-Change - ctrpoint

Last month's issue listed three steps on "How to Avoid Going to the Dogs."
It generated quite a response, most of which had to do with the desire for more
detailed information on the three steps: paying attention, stepping back, and waiting.
Since I know how to listen, I will focus on each of them one at a time beginning with this issue.

With respect to paying attention, we might first ask what that phrase actually means. What is attention? How do we "pay" it? What do we get in return for that payment when we make it?

The most important part of the English word "attention" is the Indo-European term ten, from which it derives. Ten is also found in tendon, the stretchy, cord-like tissue which holds muscle to bone. There is a lot more to be said about all this, of course, but basically we can visualize the act of attending as stretching our consciousness toward something and holding to it by focusing on it.

The payment we make is the energy spent in holding that focus. It is very easy for the mind to wander, after all.

When we make that energy payment, and for as long as we keep on making it, we get something in return. We get the chance to really see - and not just look at - whatever it is we have chosen to focus on. (A generation or so ago someone might have said that we get a chance to get a purchase on it.)

Whenever we are able to make a pure act of attention, which is very rare for almost everyone, we are able to just watch and see things as they really are without any of our ideas about them getting in the way.

Once we see things as they really are, it is much easier for us to know what to do in relation to them - to undertake right action and make the best possible decisions in the moment.

What happens when we don't pay attention? We make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are very costly - and they generate anxiety, worry, situational depression, general melancholy, and fear.

Now we come to another vital question: What are we supposed to pay attention to?

The answer has to do with the way in which are in the world. We are human beings, that is to say, beings who are human - and as such we are primarily responsive beings. We did not create this world, nor did we place ourselves here. We do not initiate the principles of reality. We respond to them.

There are three main realms in which we must all be responsive - and responsible. They are circumstance, situation, and condition.

Along with time, circumstance, situation, and condition are the basic elements of human existence. Circumstance is that which encircles us. It is the surround in which all things are encompassed. One circumstance is encircled by another, and then another, and ultimately by the cosmos at large.

Situation is placement, the way in which we are sited within the surrounding circumstance. Human existence is situated in the material order and within time. Any individual human life consists of movement from one situation to another over time.

Condition is a specific state of being at a given moment in a particular situation. With respect to a person, it entails the state of body, mind, and spirit together. When a soldier in a circumstance of combat finds himself in the situation of being outnumbered, it may well be his condition which determines the outcome.

We need to pay continual attention to our circumstance, situation, and condition all at once - and without collapsing our attention into any one of them alone.

Soren Kierkegaard once wrote about a theater on fire.* The audience is engaged in the entertainment and laughing loudly, completely unaware of the danger as the blaze slowly grows out of control.

One of the theater’s clowns tries to alert everyone to the fire. But the people see him only as a clown and not as a man. They react to him as though his shouts and gestures are just another part of the show.

Their condition was that they had collapsed their attention into the situation and thus disregarded the rest of their circumstance. They were not watching the surround - they were only looking at the stage. They were looking at the show, not seeing the room.

Keeping watch on all fronts - circumstance, situation, and condition - all the time . . . that is primary. Not allowing your attention to be captured by any one thing is part of it.

It's easy. Every Wednesday
for a few minutes between
10:00 and Noon sit down and
turn inward - through prayer,
meditation, self-hypnosis or
any modality you choose -
and send out good thoughts
to everyone else in the circle.

J. Kingston Cowart
www.self-change.com
619.561.9012
Post Office Box 19005
San Diego CA 92159

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