The Attention Game
Introduction:
To understand the enormous power of attention, we must first accept the enormous power of our mind.
A master key is one that opens all doors. What door do we want to open? Man wants to open the door to happiness... and the definition of happiness varies from person to person.
For some it is feeling strong sensations, for others, it is achieving inner peace, having the ideal partner, or having power, money, position, possessions ... Ideals whose nature has all the shapes, colors, and possibilities of a kaleidoscope ... Attention is the master key that opens these doors!
Hello friends and friends:
One of the basic pillars on which Toltec knowledge rests is the specialized management of attention, however, before being able to do such a thing it is necessary to understand how attention works within the personality of the ego, the game that we play with attention, which unfortunately is exhausting and leads to a very sad life. The good news is that we are not condemned to that dungeon for life; Based on understanding this game of attention and later applying strategies to direct attention in a different way, we can have access to create a different reality and live a more awake, healthy and beautiful life. And then if we begin to have specialized management of our attention and finally do "magic" with it.
(Excerpt from the book The Attention Game, by Marly Kuenerz)
THE ATTENTION GAME Many of us identify exclusively with the body, saying that the mind depends on the state of our brain: if it deteriorates, mental capacity is lost. Although this is true, it is only a part of it... We know that a part of our brain, which we neither know well nor master, is responsible for making this incredible machine work, so delicate and, at the same time, so resistant. which is our body.
Although our life depends on it, we frequently mistreat it, neglect its most basic needs, neglect the chemistry that occurs in it daily through food, and hinder its functioning, filling our body with alcohol, drugs, tobacco, fats, and all kinds of excesses. We ignore him, until one day he scares us to death: something stops working! Paralyzed and powerless, we became aware that we were playing with fire...
Right now, we depend on a part of our mind that governs our emotional life. In it, all the strong impressions that we had throughout our lives have been recorded, which will demarcate an endless number of trends and talents, as well as difficulties and limitations. From this "cocktail" of impressions, mechanical reactions, thoughts, tendencies, and impulses, in addition to genetic information, will come the reaction to the shock that the body has given us. If the resulting "cocktail" is in our favor, we will take care of the body, focus on healing it, and give it the care and support it deserves. If, on the contrary, the mixture is corrosive, we will continue in the deterioration process, feeling powerless in the face of the self-destruction that has been installed. In this case, we will see the body as a separate and enemy entity that betrays and dominates us. The separation between mind and body is accentuated, and with it, the feeling of helplessness. We believe that our body has power...
If we cannot deny that the body is governed by a small, innate brain powerhouse that gives it all physiological and biochemical orders, we cannot deny the influence that emotional content and thoughts have on this powerhouse. Faced with a dangerous situation, there will be a whole series of organic, measurable, and visible reactions, which vary from one person to another. The emotional reaction of a man to a lion is not the same as that of his tamer; He will not panic, his legs will not shake, nor will he feel cold sweat ... Although his body is in a state of alert, he does not feel powerless; he knows what he has to do, in addition, his attention is trained, he knows how to concentrate on the animal, recognize the slightest reactions from it. His mental and emotional attitude will determine not only his physiological reactions but also his performance. It is, therefore, undeniable that judging oneself powerless in a given situation or, on the contrary, feeling resourceful will be what will determine the resulting emotion and this, in turn, will trigger the corresponding physiological reaction.
Our whole life is like this ... according to the information we have about a situation, this is how we judge it, this is how ideas will be, which in turn will trigger emotions that will influence our body. But it also happens the other way around: if the body hurts us and we feel fear and helplessness, we create the idea that we are sick, and this will influence our ability to heal. The circle works in one direction as well as the other.
Our personal computer.
We can easily understand that a computer program responds faithfully to the orders we give it. However, it is difficult for us to accept that our mind reacts mechanically to what is engraved on it. If a certain smell provokes feelings of well-being or tension, it is natural that this is due to the fact that that smell is linked to a joyous or an anguishing experience, previously recorded in our mental computer. And how are these recordings produced? Always through our senses. In the same way that an odor can evoke one feeling or another, it will not elicit any response if there is no recording associated with that odor. Thus, a gesture, a tone of voice or noise, the taste of a certain food, or body contact with some kind of roughness or softness may have been recorded. Similarly, a bodily sensation, painful or pleasant, muscular tension, hunger, or bodily sensations, may have been associated with specific situations. All of this will evoke moods and even physiological reactions that may seem inexplicable to us if we are not aware of what has been previously recorded. When our senses capture something that corresponds to a previous recording, it occurs as a step back in time and the same sensations of the past are relived. This often causes behaviors totally inappropriate to the reality of the moment, incomprehensible and childish attitudes. So our reactions, ways of thinking, and judging things, are closely related to these recordings that have occurred throughout our history and cause mechanical reactions that we do not always understand, since emotion may not be accessible. What's more: many powerful recordings act and determine endless actions and judgments without us feeling anything! They are the most difficult to access, and the ones that provoke skepticism ... Emotion is the bridge to the past; if we do not feel, we do not get to the root, and it seems to us that our reactions and sensations are inexplicable, fallen from the sky ... However, it is precisely these recordings that most influence our life!
In the same way, words are also recorded, which come to condition our lives in a disproportionate and amazing way. Because adult logic has veiled the emotion of past experience, it is sometimes difficult to believe that a word can have such weight, such influence on our feelings and decisions. An order recorded verbatim, literally, will be influencing the whole set of ideas ... The mere fact of discovering it and keeping it or present through attention will alter ancient and forgotten recordings!
All these recordings are continually staining our perception, and perception will determine how we judge a situation ... Imagine, for a moment, that instead of eyes we had microscopes, our concept of the world would be completely different! If we could opt for three visual positions: the "normal", the microscope, or a telescope, we would have information about three realities that seem completely different to us and that, nevertheless, coexist peacefully every day ... Our mind would have to be flexible, elaborating at the same time three different angles of the same reality. We would realize that the world we see is only a tiny part of reality ...! and what is more important still: we could not forget it! Because perception would be permanently reminding us. As things are, we know it but we forget it because our conception of the world is chained to the characteristics and limitations of our sensory apparatuses ... but this does not change, at all, what the world really is. The fact that we forget everything that we do not see and hear does not make it cease to exist.
This forgetfulness makes us judge everything with the same smallness and limitation of our sensory organs. And we end up judging our mind from this very limitation, forgetting that it is capable of seeing everything from • all angles, of perceiving everything, of abstracting from the sensory, of connecting with all realities. The capacity of our mind is something so prodigious, that instead of questioning it, we could use the time learning to take advantage of it much better, making our life richer and more harmonious.
Beyond memory and oblivion.
To illustrate the enormous power of the mind and also the fascinating way that the body has of saving all the experiences to which it is exposed, I am going to mention two very clarifying facts. The first book written by an autistic person was recently published in Germany. A boy with whom it was never possible to cross a single word, was able, by means of an ingenious computer program, to describe the lurid inner world of him. From the first faulty sentences, he went, little by little, to describe states of mind and complete experiences, recounting an astonishing amount of information. It was learned that this boy had spent entire days of his childhood leafing through, page by page, the books in the library of his parents. What was not known is that he was endowed with an immeasurable photographic memory, capable of retaining each of those pages that he had leafed through for countless hours ... All this legacy, which touched on the most disparate subjects, from the Bible to biology books. , history and psychology, accumulated in his mind, constituting the substrate on which he was able, years later, to describe his entire tortured and fascinating inner world.
Equally amazing is our body's memory. Years ago, in a breathing session, we noticed an unmistakable strong smell of chloroform in the room. It came from one of the group participants, who was breathing with the others. We learned later that the mother of this 36-year-old man breathed in a very high dose of chloroform during her birth. She told us that even recently, her mother's body continued to react to the slightest smell of chloroform, suffering bouts of vomiting and nausea. In that breathing session, by some of these wonderful and mysterious mechanisms that our body has at its disposal, the chloroform impregnated in the cells of that man, no less than 36 years old, came to the surface and was released!
Another interesting case occurred when a person, doing a breathing session in the bathtub, began to make an irrepressible speech, expressing an explosive resentment that had been repressed for years. His body began to release dark residue, so that, in a few minutes, the water line was marked with a thick black border of impurities!
If we pay attention to it, we do not have to stray from our day-to-day to discover examples that demonstrate, without a doubt, the unknown capacities of our amazing mental potential. In a psychological experience, one hundred women were invited to sit in an empty theater. Half of them were "happy" women, who had a stable personality and satisfying love life, as well as professional success and a good financial situation. The other half was made up of women with an unstable personality, with a conflictive sentimental and social life, and without work success. It was noted where each woman had sat. A hundred men were then invited to sit in the same empty room, and the armchairs they selected were noted. The result was conclusive and surprising: almost all the chairs where the "happy" women had sat were taken by men, while those of the "unhappy" women were left empty! Behind an apparent chance, there was the perception of something that is beyond reason ... When your attention is dispersed in everyday life, you perform a series of involuntary, apparently "casual" acts that want to tell you something. You forget something, to have to go back to a specific place; you hit yourself when you thought something dense and unpleasant; coffee falls on an important text ... They are mechanical actions that, if you analyze them, you will discover that they are signaling a purpose! As if your car took you on its own.
And this is where the attention comes in! Because you can let yourself be carried away by this car forever, without even realizing what is happening, in which case the program will repeat itself without great variations. Or you can start to notice. Understanding what your unconscious recordings are after is the first step. Then, add information to the program, modify recordings, to be able to take your life towards new directions, more harmonious and in accordance with your options. Actually, we play with an advantage, because the program does not think, and you do! By placing your attention in this parallel world, you discover a script whose content takes place overlapping, like an alien double life, but which continues with you, perfectly coherent ... You are making contact with a hidden and powerful part of you, unknown and familiar, alien and own, fascinating and fearsome, hopeful and strange. After this discovery, your life will no longer be the same. By learning to direct your attention, you will be able to interfere and modify the script of your life. The teachings of the yogis and some indigenous groups of the world. The ancient yogis or certain indigenous groups already knew it; they trained his attention as if his life depended on it. Millennia ago they already knew what the key to self-control was and is. They dedicated to it the same tenacity and the same perseverance that in the West is usually put in the social and material success. They have always known that, if they dominate the attention, they will be able to influence all the corporal, mental and emotional functioning; They will be able to expose their body to heat and cold, to surgical interventions without feeling pain, and they will also be able to choose their feelings and take their thoughts where it seems appropriate. They own their computer, and therefore their life and body.
In the West we know the importance of attention for study and work, but not for the domain of the inner life. This has been taught to us by the yogis since time immemorial. Attention is the key ... with it, we can stop suffering, physically or morally; with it we can choose happiness. They also know that, while we are not masters of our attention, we are nothing more than corks floating in the sea of emotions ...
In the West, we are still debating whether it is the mind that influences the health of the body or whether it is the body that influences mental health. What is the first chicken or the egg? Many doctors treat the body as if it were the whole. Mind independent ... They do not believe that a person with a properly trained mind is capable of seeing illnesses in another person's energy field long before they can be physically detected. Simply, what is not yet known or mastered is denied. You don't pay attention to it. But that does not mean it ceases to exist. It is simply not taken advantage of, and the enormous power of the mind is wasted once again.
These ancient Sages left us another very important legacy: with our mental power and with the control of our attention we can do a lot, a lot, but we cannot do everything! There is a part that is beyond our control, that we have no choice but to accept, to abide by from a greater perspective. Why does this specific destination touch us, and not another? Why has this country, this family, this body, this color of eyes touched me? Why did I have to live these "injustices"? Because I? In the acceptance of the imponderable, in the acceptance of our destiny, and of the concrete and particular experiences that we have had to experience, this is the key to happiness.
WHAT IS THE ATTENTION GAME?
Attention is nutrition.
In endless scenarios, countless characters move. In this frenzied anthill, some play at being bosses, others at "errands"; some are good and some are bad; some rich and others poor; there is the patriarch, the beggar, the benefactor, and the thief; the gallant, the seducer and the seduced; the rejected and the arrogant; the victim and the executioner ... an endless number of roles that intermingle and cross, innumerable scripts that meet and discounter, countless stories that merge, materializing new characters and new combinations that are amalgamated, creating a tangle whose only scriptwriter is the life itself. Each of us has certain roles, some of which we like more and others less. From so much playing, we come to believe the character, we identify with him, and depending on whether it is a Greek tragedy or an American musical, we laugh, we cry, we despair, we suffer, we enjoy ... how do we get caught up in this incredible game of existence?
From childhood to old age, human beings want attention: they want to be seen, cared for, shown affection, respect, love ... to be considered, to be taken into account. It is not enough alone, so, since always, the human is looking for attention outside. First, from mom and dad, from siblings, then from colleagues and friends, from partners, from children. An endless search, always attentive to others, feeling good when he gets the attention he desires, anguished when he fails. Like a vampire, nutrition comes from others. To achieve this, he uses all the means at his disposal. If he can't get seen, he begins to try all the behaviors, attitudes, and ways of being ... he uses absolutely all the "games" that he knows to achieve the goal. He is capable of pushing himself to the limit to please, and if he does not succeed, he is capable of seeking attention at any cost, being the problem child, the incapable, the stupid, the depressed, the aggressive, becoming ill ... Anything goes, since the feeling of being alive, of being recognized, of being loved depends on it.
So our child tries until he finds the "game" that succeeds! At this moment, something unexpected happens: from now on he is no longer at the mercy of circumstances, now he has resources! He will never again have to bear the helplessness of not being seen or considered.
From now on he has in his hands a fundamental weapon: he knows how to be master of the situation, he manages to be the center of attention, even if he is receiving blows or scolding. And he can piss off mom and dad when he wants to! He can even punish them if they don't give him the love and respect he needs. He already has the power in his hands. Naturally, this is not going to deliver so easily. Even at his own expense, he learned the lesson very well. He too can be an applauded and socially accepted "game": top of the class, funny, smart, responsible, loyal, pretty, seductive, sweet. He will have the attention he needs, he knows what to do to be cared for, praised ... but at the expense of his spontaneity, at the expense of himself, since it is already an attitude that has trapped him, that is holding him prisoner.
The shot backfires.
Logically, the child clings tooth and nail to this attitude to this behavior or way of being that makes him powerful. This "game" is fixed.
It becomes a core part of his personality, everything else is built around what he succeeded in, what achieved the ultimate goal of being seen and heard. And this "game" is becoming more and more common, it comes out alone, viscerally, like a broken record. There is also another important consequence. Naturally, all the child's attention is directed outward, observing his parents, on whom he depends for everything he needs, including survival. Thus the habit of continually placing attention on the other is instigated. As long as this is so, nothing can change or transform.
The way back consists of doing it the other way around: little by little, step by step, day by day, turning your attention inward, just as it was in the beginning. The newborn only knows about himself. Time goes by and, what began as a way of being noticed, is gradually transforming into a compulsive way of being. It was so important, he put so much energy into that behavior, that he now seems to have a life of his own! That attitude begins to dominate the adolescent and then the adult, in such a powerful way that they no longer have control over the situation! He wants to behave differently and cannot, he is in the hands of the "game" that made him powerful. He realizes that he is no longer in control. But the feeling of power lasts, and even more: it seems to him that if he abandons that way of being, he remains powerless, vulnerable, in the hands of others! So he continues to hold on to his "game" as if his life depended on it, totally forgetting that the situation changes, that he is no longer a child without resources, that time has passed and, as an adult, he has a range of possibilities that I didn't have before...
At this moment, the person identifies with the role: "I am aggressive ..." Read; depressed, dependent, rebellious, victim, sick, crazy, incapable, distracted, winner, loser ... whatever character. It does not matter if he is a problematic or admired character. The compulsive extravert ... the one who has to always be nice, lively, and cheerful. It is what is expected of him. His mask has already stuck to the skin, the smile is already mandatory, it has already lost its freshness and his beauty. Now, identified with his game, our friend is already placing all his mental strength in this belief! Everything you think of life and things will be based on this judgment on yourself. And by believing it, he will be lifting it more and more, creating non-stop situations in which he convinces himself that truly ... "I am like that."
At one point in his life, he finds himself identified with a repertoire of characters with whom he moves and relates to the world. Each character has a function and brings him or has brought him a benefit, although perhaps his initial purpose is already forgotten. It's like repeating the function over and over again ... he doesn't even remember why he is always so responsible, so angry or so marginalized ... He no longer remembers that it was a mask that he used once to achieve an end ... maybe he didn't even remember I even realize it. One day, he feels something strange in his chest, like a hole, a pained memory of something missing, an anguished and endless ford, the sensation of nothingness. A question hangs in the air, like a desperate cry: "Who am I?" And our friend doesn't understand what happened to him ...! This is the Game of Attention.
A mechanism through which we identify with what we are not. We identify ourselves with a role, a mask, a certain character, and we forget what we really are Of what we have felt and been, before the judgments separated us from our instincts, our impulses and our capacity to love. Before seeing our image in the mirror and hearing a voice saying: "Look at the baby ..." At this moment the child does not understand anything: who am I, the one I feel inside me, vibrating, pulsing, or this image What do I see in the mirror? The division, the doubt, the confusion between the inside and the outside has already begun
The image begins to be more important than the Being that vibrates within us. The image already has a life of its own, it dominates us and to it we sacrifice our most longed-for ideals. We identify the image with power, we put it on a pedestal because we believe that it protects us and that without it we are lost. We come to live for her and not for our Being, our feelings and our source of love. It seems that, if we release the image, the world falls apart, we are left like a little bird just hatched from the egg in the middle of the heat of a battle. We have sold our souls in exchange for a misunderstood power ...
1.- What am I playing?
Now it is interesting to stop a bit and try to discover what is my Attention Game? It is not always easy to identify one's own game ... It is something that is done so automatically, and unconsciously, that it often escapes us. How do you get them to notice you? In what do you think you are special and different? What attitude do you have that seems natural and unalterable? Look at the list I mention below and try to figure out how you do to get the attention of others:
Being a victim, lamenting and complaining about all the injustices that you have had to suffer, all the illnesses, abandonments, efforts, ingratitude, irrationalities and evils of others, carrying the melancholy and the stabbing pain of the one who has been abused
Or being the one who always has the solutions, knows the solutions, knows what everyone should do, how to solve everything, knows the answers to all doubts?
Or are you the funny one, the one who amuses, distracts, tells jokes, encourages and lifts everyone's spirits, distributing energy and good humor to the four winds?
Or are you the one who always finds the weak point, the fault, the incomplete and inadequate part of everything, always in search of unattainable perfection?
Or are you the one who is always looking for a fight, friction, struggle, confrontation, outraged with the world and with life, demanding and overwhelming in spite of you?
Or are you the incompetent, the fool, the one who can't get things done or get results, the one who isn't smart enough, informed, educated, capable or skillful, the eternally defeated?
Or are you the efficient one, the practical one, the one who cares for everyone, thinks for everyone, provides for everyone, takes care of everyone?
Or the distracted, always in the clouds, I saw seeing your own world, absent in your daydreams and dreams?
Or are you the altruist, always worried and trying to help others, feeling in your flesh the injustices, the wars, the pains of the world?
Or the person in charge, who carries a weight on his back, who carries all the problems and you think that if you don't take care, the world will collapse
Or are you the eternal elusive one, who slips away from situations that represent a commitment, facing problems or people, responsibility or discipline?
Look, dear reader, what do you do to get them to pay attention to you, look at you, admire or disown you, talk about you, good or bad ... It is not about being good or bad, what we are looking for is the compulsive, automatic, crystallized and mechanical.
HOW TO OPEN THE DOOR.
The traveling companion.
If you are locked inside the cubicle of what you think you are, a prisoner of your own image, with your true Self wanting to expand, explode, achieve your freedom ... how can you get out of there?
Now is the time to use the key -Attention-, put it in the bolt and make the journey the other way around, that is, open. You've been on a trip with a stranger: yourself. The time has come to get intimate with this stranger, look at him, observe his movements, his desires, his resources, his unexpected promises, his needs, ideals, illusions, his evils ... Like the lion tamer, there is no other choice. than guessing it, knowing the meaning of his smallest movements, observing when his gaze shines, in which projects he places his vital energy, what things make him shrink and sadden. In the same way that it does not occur to the tamer to blame the lion for his instincts, you will not be able to prosecute the traveling companion or blame him for his hidden darkness, because you know that they are simply the result of his history. In order to understand him, you will have to accompany him through his experiences, learn about his childhood, the house where he grew up, the parents he had, greet his family, know what they wanted from him, what was really important to them. You will also have to know how his adolescence was for your friend, how he approached the opposite sex, how he threw himself into the ring of life, what bulls he had to deal with, what goring he took in learning ... You will have to know what he demands of himself, who yearns and desires, who rejects and repudiates. It is a long journey, but you have time ... it is a journey that lasts a lifetime, so don't be overwhelmed.
Surely you will take affection, understanding, forgiving, loving, and that you will end up as the most endearing friends. But for this to happen you will have to be very patient, untangle many wrongs and misunderstandings, convince your friend of his power as an adult, of his enormous capacity as a human being, of his beauty, of his purity, of his innocence. You will have to accompany him to the most gloomy corners of him, accept his wildest and most morbid instincts without a single gesture of reproach, accept his sadism and his masochism with a heart full of gratitude for trusting so much in you as to show you his miseries. You will have to gain his trust little by little, day by day, although sometimes you cannot remedy suffering and enjoy him; but always by his side, supporting him and open to everything, going down to the sewers and meeting the rats, going up to the mountains and meeting the angels. Beyond judgment, beyond good and evil.
Beyond the game of power where the image, the character, the evil, and goodness were fixed. Living with him the moments when he thought he was going to die and also those when he blamed himself for all the evils in the world. To also live his great illusions, to know the ultimate goal of his life, which may not even be true...
Together you can discover that beyond the script of the great theater of life there is another dimension, where things are different, where there is a great search for balance. A search that does not judge what is good or what is bad, but rather, as in a system of communicating vessels, the water goes where the force of gravity takes it, regardless of whether it floods a region or whether the drought leaves behind. the earth crying out for mercy. In this area, you will be able to understand many things and accept other things.
And by understanding, you will be able to stop fighting against the imponderable, the inevitable, against the Whole. See that what you judge as something terrible, is actually leading you to put the water in the communicating glasses in its right place. This other dimension does not know about your small and petty sufferings, it only knows about balance...
You are invited to this journey; To go through your entire history with yourself, to find the great recordings that hold you a prisoner of your own beliefs and your own judgments. To use the key to open the doors and walk the path towards yourself, towards yourself. Although at first, the learned habits take you to the old, to the crystallized, little by little you can learn to pay attention to your quiet traveling companion: yourself. And the doors will open, new horizons will appear, new solutions never thought of before, new ways of living life, like a large hologram that changes its appearance if you change position. Work proposal:
This work is based on a therapeutic course, which takes place over seven full days and is entitled "The Game of Attention." It is divided into four modules, four phases that deal with different aspects of the human being within their natural evolution. Each one has a definite purpose and shows different psychological mechanisms and aspects of life. It is an incursion into the world of energy and the psyche that you can follow, step by step, through these pages.
As if it were about building a house, we start at the base, with the foundations: childhood. In this first phase, we will understand why we are who we are, what is the substrate of our emotional world, and our system of ideas. What to do with psychic recordings that make us react in a childish and compulsive way, preventing us from having the behavior we want. The goal is to start managing alternatives. It is impossible to understand oneself without first making a deep foray into the moment of life in which the nervous system is forming and is registering everything that is intense and vital without considering whether it is positive or negative.
Then, we began to raise the walls, put the windows and doors of the house, going through adolescence, the couple, sexuality, work. Here, we see the consequences of all the above, in the relationship with others and with life. We enter deeply into the eternal confrontation between the sexes, since the quality and function of feminine and masculine energy are, in general, misunderstood and used. We try to see why we build and then destroy, taking away the happiness that we long for.
Finally, in the third phase, we place the roof of the house, to protect ourselves from the excess of light, water, wind, heat, and cold that is available in the outside world. Now, we are going to know the guilt that prevents us from feeling pleasure and separates us from the Whole, as well as its only way out. We enter fully into the worlds that surround us, both the material and the subtle world, which is always present. We see the concept of God and the Devil, good and evil, within the realm of intelligent energy that creates the Great Web, which envelops us all.
All this, to finally get in and out of the house. Being able to participate in the great theater of existence, enjoying its enormous wealth, variety, and magic; and, also, to be able to collect himself at home, when necessary. Being able to be within oneself and, without getting lost in one or the other... Learning to enjoy the Grand Script and also the personal script that has touched each of us.
As we progress, you will have the opportunity to apply the theory to your personal case. Accompanying almost all the topics, you will find exercises with which you can walk on your own feet and with the rhythm you choose, along this path that leads you to yourself. The sections are indicated, in italics, as in Exercise 1, so that you can locate them easily; Or skip them, if you are only interested in the theoretical part. I cannot, however, help but encourage you to do them. Many things can happen, almost without you realizing it, that makes you wake up in the morning delighted to be alive.
It is clear that a text cannot produce the intensity of an experience ... Feeling a drop of water slipping on your skin, the smell of wet earth, the emotion of the desired touch ... However, you can start the journey, begin to open the door, even if it is only a slot through which to take a look, and encourage yourself to open it a little more. Enter fully into life, which only unfolds in all its splendor when you accept all its children, both their magic and their miseries. If this is achieved, this text will have reached its goal.
2. Introductory exercises
Since mindfulness is such an extremely important thing, you can, if you wish, begin to explore its possibilities and train it. They are simple exercises that you can effortlessly fit into your everyday life. Its ultimate purpose is for you to be able to make this way back to yourself, to place your attention within yourself, your feelings, your physical sensations, your mechanical and repetitive thoughts, and also in the inner voice that speaks when you give it space. and you listen to it. To do this, your attention will have to be inside, concentrated, because this voice does not usually scream. It usually sounds like a whisper, soft and delicate. Like a stream that runs.
Exercise 1.- There is a classic exercise that can serve as a base. Not only will it help you concentrate, but it will also serve as a measure, as you can quantify your achievements. Sit comfortably in front of a large clock, an alarm clock, or a wall clock with a second hand. Try to relax your body, using the technique to which you are accustomed.
If you are not in the habit of relaxing, follow the instructions below. Close your eyes and start by concentrating on your breath, which you let run through your entire body, like a fresh wind that cleans the dust and opens doors and windows. Increasingly slower and more aware of the sensations of your body. Then you begin to relax the head (scalp, forehead, eyes, eyelids, cheeks, mouth, jaw, tongue, eyes). Then you let go of the neck (imagine the nerves that cross there flabby, soft, drooping), the neck, the shoulders. You are relaxing the thorax, going down the spine, imagining all the nerves and nervous ganglia relaxed, flabby, calm, surrendered. You keep letting go of the chest, the stomach, the bass I saw between, the buttocks and the sexual organs. Breathing slowly and feeling the cool wind opening and releasing. Finally, you relax your thighs, knees, legs, ankles, and feet.
When you feel your whole body relaxed and loose, turn your attention to the second hand of the watch. By following your path around the sphere, keep your mind blank. If thoughts come, bring them inside you, let them get lost inside you. See how long you are able to keep an eye on the second hand without your thoughts taking you away. You thus have a quantifiable measure of your ability to concentrate. You can do this exercise daily and thus check your progress.
Exercise 2.-
Place an object in front of you. Relax as in exercise 1, and start looking at this object. You will be surprised how many details it has, how many different tones, how many imperceptible nuances you can discover. Repeat this exercise a few days in a row, and then, when you have it very assimilated, when you feel familiar, begin to perceive the object from another realm. What would be the feeling of BEING this object? You can know its hidden essence and identify with it. If you succeed, you will have taken a solid step in the direction of mastering your attention. If not, just get on with it, without feeling frustrated and unhurried. It will happen when you least expect it.
Exercise 3.-
When you leave home to go about your daily life, choose a specific object where to place your attention on this day. It can be a color, a part of the body, something that sounds like voices or music. Make it a point to be aware of it throughout the day. You can choose, for example, to look at the watches that people wear, or pregnant women, or all the red clothes, or the ears and their different shapes and sizes. or in the timbres of voice., or in the shapes of the eyebrows. or in the smiling or frowning expressions of the people, or in what the signs say. In necklaces, earrings or shoes. How many people are touched on the street or what they carry in their hands? But pick only one goal per day.
It can be an interesting day, in which you discover many things that you have never noticed before. You can notice many similarities and inconsistencies that peacefully coexist. Little by little, you will be able to maintain and change the object of your attention, increasing concentration and making it more flexible in a playful and easy way.
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