Thoughts On Attention

Losing myself in a musical composition, admiring the intricacies of  a flower or the insect's wings as it crawls around the petals, surrendering to the wash of an orgasm or walking into a room rich with the decadent scent of garlic sauteed in butter and olive oil - these magical experiences demand attention - and, until recently, I always found myself too distracted to remain present with them for longer than a moment. 

Perhaps it is the part of me aware of the transitory nature of such moments, worried that whatever intense beauty has called my attention is temporary and may transform into something less…

There is a greate Hafíz poem called "Why Aren't We All Screaming Drunks?"

Why Aren’t We All Screaming Drunks?

The sun once glimpsed God’s true nature
And has never been the same.

Thus that radiant sphere


Constantly pours its energy


Upon this earth


As does He from behind


The veil.
With a wonderful God like that


Why isn’t everyone a screaming drunk?
Hafiz’s guess is this:
Any thought that you are better or less


Than another man
Quickly
Breaks the wine


Glass.

The same is true for experience.  There is no hierarchy of experience - just varying levels of comfort, pain, boredome, ecstasy, etc. and subsequent attention.  Curiosity is the medicine for judgement.  By practing the art of attention, I become aware of the richness too often buried beneath designations of positive and negative.  Feeling my body, noticing my experience, is like hugging a lonely child, like falling in love with everything I judge to be wrong with me.  By paying attention, I give myself the gift of acceptance.  Whatever is there (and often it is the painful sensations that wait at the surface), becomes a welcome guest in the home of my experience.  I kiss it and serve it tea (or wine). 


It has been my fortune to discover that this attention to the uncomfortable makes it easier to remain longer with those easier, pleasure-filled experiences as well.  In my novice understanding of quantum physics, the universe responds when it is observed.  As walking beacons of universal energy, why would it be any different for us?  Suddenly that red sign I have been avoiding with the help of my clever addictions, changes color when I look at it directly and without criticism.  And the glowing orb of pleasure, until recently too bright to address head on, is sustainably visible without the weight of judgement.

What does that mean?  Scott mentioned in his last email my having realized that the group sessions are an act of giving as well as getting.  Giving attention to ourselves, doing it together, we dissolve the boundaries separating "good" from "bad" and make a party of our suffering. We get to celebrate in the spirit of a Symposium - we get to be screaming drunks.


(inspired by Scott MacInnis' brilliant work and healing practice)