Attention is a precious currency in the fluidity of being.
I would like to suggest something to consider here:
If you are bound with your attention, and that which you are focused on is not bringing life closer to you, you are basically trapped in a stagnant and ignorant fixation.
This can be applied to many possible situations.
It could be starring onto a screen, it could be thinking about something, it could be an emotion that comes over and over again.
This is what most humans are suffering from. Things that are made up to be important are occupying our being, the mind, the heart, the body, and often we are not even aware of it.
Can you observe this in yourself?
The first step is awareness.
The next step would be to practice being very careful with how and where you apply your attention.
Possible tools are meditation, yoga, qi gong, any self-awareness practice that includes conscious breathing, movement, or creative expression. Even painting can help, but it depends on the context. Silent and non-judgemental observation is very powerful.
This is very connected to our perception. Undistorted perception is what is impossible when there is no clarity, no awareness. Most humans will not get to this point, even understanding what is written here in front of you. You always have the chance to see something that you did not see before.
If no practice is happening. If we are not taking full responsibility for how and where our attention is applied, we are very susceptible to manipulation. It’s like the seat of your car, when you start the engine, you get out of the car, and you just leave it there with the running engine. At some point it may just happen that somebody else will sit in that seat and drive your car.
If you can now see the connection between the power of your conscious attention and not being aware of what is drawing your attention, you may understand what can happen very easily if we are not fully aware of where our attention is moving toward and why.
This is the dilemma of the world right now. The unconscious fixation of attention and the state of being captured in a state of consciousness that is not really self-aware. We then become subjected to social programming and a conditioned state of being that is not empowered but rather constantly absorbed.
The only way is to become aware and to start taking back our power by becoming more centered in the perception and awareness of what is moving and animating us – moment by moment.