HELLO DARLING LOVELETS!
How is everybody doing out there?
Did you survive another week in Earth School?
I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!
Let’s have an amateur etymology lesson today, shall we?
Our subject this week is the word “attention” — which contains the proto-Indo-European root word “ten,” which means “to stretch,” and which shows up all over the place, hidden delightfully in so many words in the English language.
For instance:
tendon — a particularly stretchy cord in the body
portend — to stretch your vision into the future, and foresee what will happen next
pretend — to stretch your imagination forward and outward, without limits
tenacity — to hold onto something tightly, like a cord tied immovably to an object
abstention — to stretch yourself away from something harmful
and, of course, attention — to stretch yourself toward something
Where is your attention directed these days, Lovelets? What are you stretching toward? Is your attention even directed toward anything at all, or has it become so scattered that you find yourself constantly distracted, overwhelmed, and incredibly damn TENSE (another “ten” word, meaning stretched to the absolute limit)?
Writing these letters to ourselves every week from Unconditional Love requires a deep, even meditative, level of attention — because what we are doing here is not necessarily an act of creativity, but one of listening. For it to work, we need to get quiet. We need to let our heartbeats settle. We have to shut out all the distractions. We have to ask for guidance, but that’s not all. We then have to be still enough to actually hear it.
And what we hear can often be surprising.
That’s when you know you’re on the right track, in fact — when the answer is surprising!
Our guest this week, the brilliant Valarie Kaur, is one of the most admired peace activists working in the world today. And right there in the word “activist” is the verb “to act” — which is the opposite of stillness. Like many of us, Valarie has responded to injustice at times by throwing herself into what she calls in her letter “breathless activism,” often exhausting and even harming herself in the effort to try to make everything in the world right. And yet, when Valarie got quiet this week and gave her full attention to the voice of Unconditional Love, she was given gentle direction not to do more out there in the world, but slightly less.
Her letter inspired me to ask Unconditional Love the same sort of question: “Where do you want my attention? What should I be focused upon? In which direction shall I stretch my heart?”
I would love to hear what Love has to say to you all about this. I am listening with the deepest, most respectful attention to every one of you.
Let’s keep going. Let’s keep listening.
Love,
Your Lizzy
Part One
Part Two
Dear Love, what would you have me know today about where you want my attention?
Sweetheart, you’ve gotten a good start to the answer to this question just by showing up here, just by asking. Your attention is already attuned to the right place, by returning to this space of loving communion again and again, and seeking your answer from the correct source — from the only source you can absolutely trust to guide you.
Never in history have human minds been as strained as they are now, by demands for their attention. You carry in your pocket every day a tiny device that rings and rattles constantly, that is full of images of delight and distraction and terror and horror, that literally sends you alarms and alerts as if you were a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and where anyone who has access to you can send you a message at any moment of the day or night, saying: PAY IMMEDIATE ATTENTION TO ME.
And this is everyone, my little leaf-cutter ant. This is everyone’s reality. Little wonder everyone is so anxious and the world feels so fraught.
My dear. My heart. It is not that the alarms and alerts and demands that you receive throughout the day on your phone and in your life are not real, but they are not present. And I want you to stay present.
Stay with me through this, listen to me with an open heart and an open mind.
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans with brains exactly like yours were only aware of what was happening right before them. This technological leap that allows you to know at every moment everything that is happening to everyone in the world at the same time is a marvel of human invention. But it is profoundly unnatural.
I want you to push back against it. I have asked you before to change your relationship with your phone, and I’m asking you again. Thank you for the measures you have taken already. Thank you for going for walks with Pepita without your phone. Thank you for washing dishes and doing laundry sometimes without your phone. Thank you for (and I know this is a hard one but it’s extremely important) driving from place to place without your phone sometimes within reach. Thank you for trying not to look at your phone while you’re with your friends, and most of all, thank you for checking in with me in these letters every morning before you check in with your phone.
But I need you to go further. Or rather, I need you to come closer. Come closer to me. Come closer to the moment at hand. Come closer to attention.
You are afraid that if you detach from your notification device it will signal to the world that you don’t care about it. That is not true. You do care. You care immensely about the world. But if you focus upon my voice (which can only be heard in the present moment, through your full and undivided attention) I will always tell you how and where to distribute the necessarily finite amount of care and resources that you have, as one person, to offer. I will tell you exactly where and how I want you to offer it and show up. Hasn’t that always been the case? Haven’t I always directed you as to how and where and when to show up, and how to help, and haven’t I always told you what I want you to do?
Trust me, my love, more than you trust the alarm bells, which do nothing but send your animal body into panic and overwhelm — and then you become just another sick person, and then soon there will be nobody left who can help.
But you asked where your attention should be directed right now.
Remember what you read recently — that in some zen monasteries, “gossip” is defined as talking about anything that is not right in front of you. Gossip, in this case, meaning “idle chatter,” or “thoughtless distracted words.” Note that the zen monks don’t say that gossip is talking about anyONE who is not right in front of you; they say it is talking about anyTHING that is not happening right in front of you.
Does this sound extreme to you? Well, consider this — one of the purposes of all monastic communities throughout history is to prove that people can live together for their whole lives, generation after generation of people, without going to war and killing each other. How do you do that? What if the answer is: by giving your attention to what is happening right in front of you? Be available to it, whoever and whatever it is.
Or, as they say in your rooms of recovery, keep your head where your feet are.
I know this is a lot to take in. I know it is different from what you have been taught. That is how you know it’s true. Take it in slowly. We have forever in which to discuss this.
Thank you for your attention, precious one, today and all days. Your attention is more valuable and more important than you could ever know.
I love you.
Love,
LOVE
Prompt
This week, I suggest you ask a question that you may already secretly know the answer to, if you are like so many of us who are overly attached to our ever-present devices. This week, try asking this: Dear Love, what would you have me know about where I devote my attention, and where I should devote my attention?
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