Attention Heals

In my early 20s, I tried to kill myself three times, for the storyteller in my head told me I was a worthless piece of shit!

Everybody had tried to fix me since I was 10 – psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, and mental hospitals. This only made it worse because it was based on the idea that there was something wrong with me.

When I was 27 my first teacher came into my life, and he taught me ‘in the seeing is the movement’.  As I let in this truth, my life went from a b-grade, black-and-white, horror movie to a Dolby surround sound, Technicolor, Panavision movie.   I wasn’t yet awake enough to stay present with this truth, but it slowly began to work its magic inside of me. How did that happen?

See in your mind’s eye a beautiful ocean, the most beautiful ocean you can imagine. The ocean represents the field of being that is your true nature. But floating on the ocean is a small opaque bubble which I call the bubble of struggle. As we grew up and thoughts began to fill up our heads, we all got caught in that bubble, trying to make ourselves and our lives be what we thought they should be.  This is the endless game of struggle that cuts us from the ocean of being that is our home.

How do you unhook from the bubble of struggle so you can come home to the ocean of being? If you look closely, you’ll see that most therapy and even most religions are about trying to change the bubble of struggle. This works up to a point but it doesn’t bring you the freedom you long for. How you become bigger than your bubble of struggle is not from trying to fix it, change it, get rid of it, rise above it, or make anything different than what it is. How you become free is to give your immediate experience the light of your accepting attention. There is a huge difference between saying ‘I am afraid’ and ‘I see you fear and it’s okay that you are here.’

This is what my first teacher showed me – there was nothing inside of me that needed to be fixed or changed. In the seeing of these old patterns of thought I took on when I was very little, I learned to not get seduced into their stories and they began to move through me like the clouds move through the sky.

Of course, in order to do this, you have to strengthen the muscle of your attention. For most of your life it has just followed thought wherever it goes. If thought says you’re mad, you think you’re mad. If thought says you’re sad, you think you’re sad. You need to strengthen the muscle of attention so you don’t get caught in your storyteller’s version of reality.

This is why I invite people to give themselves the gift of five minutes a day where they choose a focus in the here and now like their breath and ground their attention there. And then, when they notice their attention has wandered back into paying attention to thoughts, there is no judgment. There is just the willingness to bring their attention back to their breath. And every time they do this, they strengthen the muscle of their attention.

This is how I came from a place where I didn’t feel I deserve to live, feeling deeply ashamed that I was a failure at suicide into living from a quiet mind and open heart.  I had discovered how to be curious about what I was experiencing and even welcoming whatever is here rather than needing to change it. As I often say at the end of a meditation I have led, “The healing we are ready for doesn’t come from changing anything.  It comes from the ability to see and be with what is.”

I assure you, as you develop the muscle of your attention, you will come to the place where even the deepest of states like helpless hopeless despair, terror, and rage will arise inside of you, and rather than getting caught in their web, you meet them with your aware heart. As you do, you discover that you are the spaciousness that all your thoughts, feelings, and sensations are moving through.

Are you willing to give yourself the gift of five minutes a day? I assure you, as you begin to see the phenomenal power of strengthening your attention, a team of wild horses couldn’t keep you away from strengthening your attention. And more and more you will rest in the ocean of being that is your true nature.