WE BECOME WHAT WE PAY ATTENTION TO

Season One | Post 4

In the last post, I recommended trying one of the Train the Mind exercises called, Find the Good. All of the Train the Mind prayers and meditations are purposefully designed.

• First, they gently disrupt feedback loops we've created with our algorithms.

  
  

• Second, these exercises focus our attention on an alternative just long enough that we feel a bit uncomfortable. This discomfort is due to the fact that our brains are designed to look for new stimuli and conditioned by our tech to hunger for this quick stimulation. Consequently, we may want to leave the Train the Mind exercises and find something more shiny, intriguing, or exciting to view. However, it is in the moments of discomfort, when we intentionally choose to

  
  

d i s r u p t t h e l o o p &

f o c u s o u r a t t e n t i o n ,

that our brains begin to form new neural networks. That is what happens when we choose Train the Mind exercises like Find the Good meditations, we begin to create something new.

Why might we want to Train our Minds & create something new?

In short, if you are like me, I need to create something new in my mind because what has been reinforced over the last several years has not been helpful for me living the TELOS of Jesus today.

Below is a long quote from Ilia Delio, Templeton Course in Science and Religion award winner and Chair in Theology at Villanova University. Ilia's writing provided words that helped me understand my own mind better.

The problems of our age - war, conflict, racial and religious injustice, economic greed, power, corruption, control and manipulation, lying and deceit - are human problems. We have literally lost our minds. We have untethered the human mind from a higher level of consciousness, allowing our minds to wander aimlessly amid fields of uncensored information, burdening the mind with emotional and psychological baggage, copious amounts of junk information, and dousing the mind with alcohol and drugs periodically. We have the equivalent of a fast-food problem with regard to the mind ... Just as the body cannot tolerate a steady diet of junk food indefinitely without eventually succumbing to a heart attack, so the mind cannot engage infinite unbridled information without becoming exhausted.

Gathering the mind into the presence of Omega (God) is difficult in our modern age because we live in a world of distractions ... Where is our mind at any given moment? How much do we allow our minds to migrate into multiple worlds? [Is it any wonder that we feel fragmented, restless, ill-at-ease, and exhausted when our minds are toggling back and forth between multiple worlds?]

How we focus our minds and shape our thoughts creates our world.

Non-dual consciousness is becoming aware of the larger whole of which we are a part. It involves overcoming the illusion of the separate self and recognizing one's connectedness to the whole of life. The only way into a sustainable future is to regain soul, both individual soul and world soul, by discipling the mind, setting the mind on oneness or unity, and acting out of this oneness as part of a larger whole. Our thoughts are not neutral or private; they do something, and what they do is create the world.

(multiple excerpts from the chapter,

Putting on the Mind of Christ from the book,

Making All Things New by Ilia Delio, pgs. 149-173).

When I first read these lines in particular:

• We have untethered the mind from a higher level of consciousness.

• The mind cannot engage infinite unbridled information without become exhausted.

• How we focus our minds and shape our thoughts creates our world.

• Our thoughts are not neutral or private, they do something, and what they do is create the world.

  
  

I immediately sensed a pause in my spirit - an indication that I needed to stop and think on these things for a bit.

Quote 1:

"We have untethered the mind from a higher level of consciousness"

Instead, it seems I (we?) have tethered our minds to devices that provide us with everything from the mundane to the macabre to the mortifying to the magnificent. Unfortunately, I often find myself gasping for substance when my mind is tethered to my devices and I long for a return to the spacious mind that is open and gracious when tethered instead to a higher level of consciousness.

Quote 2:

"The mind cannot engage infinite unbridled information without becoming exhausted"

This exhaustion could also be described as an experience of disintegration. My mind can't possibly integrate all the sensory input coming at me all day long. Consequently, I often feel exhausted, like I am unraveling or disintegrating, as I am pulled in too many directions at the same moment for my mind to be steady and at ease.

Quote 3:

"How we focus our minds and shape our thoughts creates our world"

What I allow my mind to contemplate ... ruminate on ... pay attention to, whatever that may be, it dramatically influences the words I speak and the actions I take. Just ask my adult children. They will tell you that I became much more controlling of their lives in high school when my mind was focused on all the ways they could be harmed on a Friday night. My focus and rumination on fear based thoughts often created a world in our home where my children's lives and our relationships were impacted.

Quote 4:

"Our thoughts are not neutral or private, they do something, ... they create the world"

One day science may support the theory that quantum mechanics and processes in the brain shape human experiences and reality. For now, it still holds that our thoughts do do something... our thoughts often influence the decisions we make and actions we take. Subsequently, we create the world around us one thought, one decision, one action at a time. And these thoughts impact more than ourselves... they affect those around us. When I really think about that, I sense an invitation to be more mindful of my own mind because I am impacting more than just me due to what I focus on.

What our individual minds - and our collective mind - focuses on and pays attention to does in fact shape our world. Which is why training the mind to focus on good, lovely, pure, and noble things is necessary.

The Power of Attention

What holds your attention?

What does your mind, body, and spirit become lost in because you are paying such close attention to it that time stands still and you are caught up in that topic or experience? Whatever that is, well, it shapes you.

An unfortunate example of how my attention ultimately shaped my life:

During COVID, I walked through stores wearing a mask, noticing every. single. person. not wearing a mask who was coughing. I paid attention to how close I was getting to them wondering if I would inhale the germs that I might spread to my aging parents.

For two years,  I found myself paying close attention to science and stories, facts and fictions about this illness and the ramifications of it. I focused on who might make me sick and purposefully created space between us. Connection and conversation were replaced with distance and distrust.

This fascination (fixation?) with germs and illness, personal values vs. communal values, and the like stayed top of mind month after month. And during this time, I began to think in repetitive ways about people, their values, and their choices.

Post COVID, I woke up up to the reality of just how much changed in me. Once upon a time my default was empathy and curiosity. Post pandemic, my default seemed to be making judgements about others, their values and their choices. What had happened to me?!

My neural networks had changed.

What I paid attention to for years shaped my mind, decisions, and actions.

My mind influenced the creation of a new world around me.

And this new land was quite unlovely.

How Attention could be a Gift

I have to admit, I'm a bit of a fangirl when it comes to the writings of Curt Thompson.*

Curt has said, "We become what we pay attention to." Whew. When I let that quote really sink in, it kinda knocks the wind out of me. What do I actually pay attention to? What do I train my mind to focus on? What world am I creating because of my habits of thinking?

During COVID, I paid attention to all the people who were different than me. And that shaped me, my relationships, and the 'world' I inhabited during those years (and after). Post COVID, I am still detangling myself from the unhelpful patterns of relating that emerged during that time.

As I look back on that time, I do have compassion for myself. It makes sense why my mind paid such close attention to the things that it did. However, now that there is a bit of space between that season and the present, I want to sift through the life I've created and begin modifying the unhelpful habits that emerged.

This will require paying attention.

• Paying attention to the beauty and goodness in the world (Find the Good exercises)

• Paying attention to the glimpses of God in others (See Imago Dei exercise)

• Paying attention to the Presence of God all around (Practice the Presence exercise)

• and so on...

The gift of attention is that it directs our focus.

Attention influences what topics, ideas, and values our mind re-integrates around. Directing our attention is one way we use our agency to help bring integration and renewal into our individual minds and then the life we co-create.

Landing the Plane for Today

Instead of allowing algorithms to shape me, I can use intentional attention to influence who I become. For today, I need to take a moment to consider: What am I paying attention to and how is that influencing who I am becoming?

Until next time....

Find the Good Exercises - attempt #2

Next Post

*Some books by Curt Thompson:

• Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising connections between neuroscience and spiritual practices that can transform your life and relationships

• The Soul of Desire: Discovering the neuroscience of longing, beauty, and community