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What we pay attention to becomes our life

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity” – Simone Weil

In meditation, a home base is the place we come back to. The sensation of the breath at the belly, the hum of a vent, the movement of wind in the grass. Some comforting or neutral thing in our immediate sensory experience that we anoint with our attention. And then we forget what the heck we were doing. And then we wake up! And then we come back. 

What sounds ho-hum is arguably the most important skill a human can acquire. We can notice when we're somewhere we don’t want to be – stuck in rumination, bitterness, anger, reactivity, resistance, conviction, aggression – all the things. Instead of being helplessly subject to whatever’s causing us (and the people around us) suffering, we can notice ‘oh that's happening!’ and attempt to pay attention to something else. I say “attempt’ because of course this is an imperfect process. Our derangements have momentum. And yet the choice is there, if only a flicker. A flicker can become a candle flame, a strobe light, a new world. What we pay attention to becomes our life.

It begins with the capacity to come home to the present. This is necessary for self-regulation, and for co-regulation. It’s necessary for making ‘hey I’m here with you’ contact with other humans. It’s necessary for healing trauma, for parenting, for leadership, for observing prairie dogs in the wild, and for improvising in a comedy troupe. 

Meditation is one way to get better at it. And it can be enjoyable– that feeling of really sinking into a home base, of time slowing down. The generosity of our attention invokes generosity back. We come home to ourselves. 

Or maybe we just drool a bit. 

Let’s find out! Short guided meditation below, recorded in my friend Tasha’s home studio. Just press play.

Jeff