Attention and Identity

"I was a hidden treasure and wished to be known, so I created creatures, in order to be known in them." Islamic Hadith

We are embedded in consciousness, the energy of pure awareness, on which all experience is displayed. Consciousness is not what or who are. It is the display of experience, not the one who sees that display. In the commonplace act of directing our attention, we direct our consciousness. That in us which directs our attention is who we are and has dominion over energies, including the conscious energy. There is a clear distinction between attention and consciousness. Attention is a combination of will and energy. Will combines with the creative energy to direct the conscious energy. This is the process of attention. We are our will. Our I is will. And since attention is one form of will, we are our attention.

The conscious energy has no boundaries in space and time, and thus is always everywhere. Nevertheless, it violates our intuitive eye for the truth to say that a blade of grass is conscious. But to say that a blade of grass has the will to be itself, to be that blade of grass, does seem right and has the ring of truth. The will of a blade of grass, though rudimentary and limited, seems appropriate in describing the full reality of that blade of grass, how it can be itself. The will that makes us what we are is uniquely our own, uniquely us, while at the same time, will is universal with a universal source.

Here is an exercise to try, which you might find easiest to work with outdoors. Everything you see has will in it, behind it, behind its being what it is. Take this into your perception: that will is all around you in everything. And all that will is not separate pieces of will. All will is one will. All will is connected. The will in everything you see is coming up from that one will, like the fingers of one hand. That ocean of will all around you, also comes up in you, as you. The will in you is inextricably united, of a piece, with the will in everything around you and with its Source, the ocean of will behind it all.

The exercise is to open to this perception of will. But there is a wrinkle. Will is not material; it is the perceiver and never the perceived. We cannot know will, or see it. Yet it is possible to be our will, because we are our will. And in being our will, in being our attention, we can also open to the will in everything else, simply by intending to do so. We open to being ourselves and to being the All.

Remarkably, in this ocean of will, we do not lose our identity. We are still fully and uniquely ourselves. In this we each come into our rightful place: simultaneously our individual self and the Great Whole. It is the transcendent nature of will that enables it, enables us, to be both. Even to say that we are connected with the Whole, or part of the Whole, or connected with each other, or connected with nature, is misleading because will is one, indivisible, and does not have parts: no room for connections where there is no separation. We are both ourselves and the Great Whole.

There can be a dynamic ebb and flow in this. Usually we are only in the individual side of Reality. But we can open to, practice being in touch with, the universal side. We can become comfortable with the truth that our nature as the Whole does not eclipse our nature as an individual and that our individual nature need not eclipse our nature as the Whole. Indeed, the two are one nature. This is the mystery of will.

This ebb and flow between being individual and being the Whole, is akin to the wave-particle duality in quantum physics. We are the wave. We are the particle. We are something more than both. We are the will that manifests this dual nature.

In the current condition of humanity, at some point early in our life we become unmoored from our Divine roots and lose contact with our Source. We do not know who or what we are. Once we begin our search to understand who we are, our search to reclaim our roots, the truth gradually unfolds, and we come back home to our real Self.

No one else can reassemble us, put us back in touch. We can only return of our own accord. Practice presence and all that it entails, so that you are here, so that you are yourself, the first requirement. Persistently practice being the will in the Whole, to reawaken the perception of the Real, the ocean of will. Meditation and prayer can also help, as you reach toward the Divine from Whom you were never separated. God is not other. There is no other.

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