Pay Attention
Pay attention is the command from all gurus. But, paying attention is a practice that you grow into. It’s not a solution to healing. It’s the practice of healing. You should first understand where your attention is going.
The average person is likely to open their eyes wider to look around when commanded to pay attention. They take copious mental notes on how people treat them. They may observe how often someone initiates contact, who borrows from them without returning what was borrowed, and where the safest place is to confide their secrets.
People pay attention to what makes them feel safe, loved, and connected. They search for who is catering to their needs and judge situations according to comfort. When people are happy, they cling to the person or circumstance they believe brought them happiness. When they are unhappy, they blame a person or circumstance for their unhappiness. This is the common version of paying attention.
People also pay attention to external cues to define themselves or their experiences. They surrender to labels according to horoscopes, diagnoses, love languages, or experiences, such as survivors. The labels dictate their fixed mindset. They act as victims of circumstance rather than believe they are free agents.
Label or Disable
Labels or categories of experiences can be valuable tools in healing. They create healthy narratives that position you to move forward. For example, in Alcoholics Anonymous, members identify as “recovering alcoholics.” As such, they are given a valuable script to address common experiences.
Someone who may have resigned to believing they were a bad person can enter a safe space for healing upon acceptance of the label. Being a recovering alcoholic is a healthier narrative than “I used to be a drunk.” The new label brings them into the present rather than being defined by their past. It also creates a community and a recovery script.
For all the good labels can do, some people limit their life by attaching to them. They may struggle to connect to anyone who is not connected to the label and feel insignificant in the larger world. No emotional or spiritual growth occurs because they hide behind the label and its scripts.
Labels should not limit you or release you from responsibility to connect with all people. For example, knowing your love language isn’t intended to demand people to cater to your preference.
Identifying as a survivor doesn’t make you a victim in all your relationships. Being a Scorpio doesn’t excuse your sexual prowess. Labeling yourself as spiritual doesn’t make you better than someone who identifies with a religion, no matter how many times a week you practice meditation or yoga.
Leading yourself by labels prevents you from paying attention because you have a tinted lens. You cannot see the world clearly, and the world cannot see you. You may feel safer that way. Decisions can come quick without personal responsibility. You pay attention to the script instead of your essence.
Being Present
There is merit in observing your surroundings, but not as a focus. In the world of transformation, looking around is contrary to the healing expectation. The “Be present” command refers to looking inside. Observe what gets stirred up in you to learn your triggers.
Triggers are anything that disturbs your peace or throws off your emotional equilibrium. If you have never experienced peace, you may not realize there is such a thing as inner calm. You don’t know what you are missing. So your motivation may be low. Transforming for inner peace may be like trying to tell a blind person how beautiful the color blue is.
Someone born blind would not be at ease following a miraculous surgery that gives them sight. They would initially lack accurate depth perception and feel disoriented. The beautiful gift of sight would be an ugly experience initially.
So it is with paying attention to the present moment. The learning curve can be steep depending on your level of psychological unconsciousness. You may not know what you are seeing at first. You may need help distinguishing between internal and external stimuli. You may not know the internal cues for what is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or dangerous.
You may become hyper-emotional from paying attention but feel less in control of your emotions. For example, failed expectations may trigger depression. You can identify the relationship between depression and expectations. But you remain confused about changing the expectations or healing the depression. You don’t know which to address or how to address it. All you have learned so far is how to connect to both by being present.
Awareness is enough to begin the process of transformation and healing. Being present is cumulative. The more you do it, the easier it is to do. Behavior begins to shift by being present with what is happening inside you.
Allowing yourself to remain present without trying to fix what comes up is critical. Efforts to fix often return you to your past or propels you into the future. You yield to the familiar rather than surrendering to the present moment.
You will never know your authentic self as long as you make discomfort the problem. When you allow discomfort, you learn what is happening in your inner world. Release comfort as the goal of healing. Seek clarity and truth by becoming the observer of oneself.
Observation Changes Behavior
Research on observation supports the concept of presence. In one experiment, participants were left in a room unattended to complete a test. One group of participants was distinguished from the other by having a large mirror where they could see their reflections. Results showed that participants who could see their reflections were significantly less likely to cheat.
Even at the atomic level, when particles were observed in the Double Slit Experiment, their behavior changed. When observed, particles behaved more uniformly than when they moved without observation. This strange physics phenomenon supports the value of observation. Being present means being the observer of oneself. Observation redirects behavior.
Observe your thoughts, feelings, and behavior for alignment. Many people align their thoughts and feelings but have difficulty aligning their behavior. Others act firmly on their feelings, but their thoughts remain misaligned. Misalignment often accompanies the victim mentality.
The Victim
For example, a man named James wanted to interview for a company where a woman was the CEO. His past work relationships with women had high conflict. But this was his dream job. So he did everything right to prepare for the interview and made sure he knew his stuff. In the interview, however, he showed little initiative and presented as cold and distant.
When he received his rejection notice a week later, his negative thoughts about working with women were confirmed. He felt unseen and ignored. If he applied presence to his feelings, he could realize he has felt victimized by women ever since his stepmother refused to let him spend the summers with his father as a child.
James applied labels to his experience and continued to believe that women are overbearing and always trying to put men down. He disempowered himself by being a victim. While it’s true that James was a victim of a woman’s misuse of authority as a child, he is not an adult victim of women’s power. He is the victim of his mind.
Of course, James doesn’t claim to be a victim because that would require him to look at himself. Instead, he judges women’s behavior and plays the victim by default. He can’t connect to his childhood victimization because he has hidden his inner child voice. His thoughts, actions, and feelings won’t align until he goes within.
Acknowledgment of early victimization is sometimes a prerequisite for healing. We must come out of denial and be present with the reality that our past affects us. This doesn’t require us to return to the past. It requires us to acknowledge that our past is present with us.
Some people are so hell-bent on surviving that they have never accepted that they were once helpless, much less acknowledge that the past affects their present. Instead, they attempt to reject all vulnerability, run from any potential of getting hurt, and refuse to take risks.
James showed no initiative in the interview because he wanted to be safe from criticism or conflict with the woman CEO. It’s a conundrum where you create the very situation you try to avoid. Being present to observe your behavior up close and from within is necessary to stop the cycle.
The Presence of Time
Even if James were willing to go within, he would not likely have made an immediate connection to his childhood. Transformation through presence is a practice. Consistency opens opportunities for the Aha! experiences.
Carrying emotional weight is similar to physical weight. You can’t lose 15 pounds in the day even if you fast and work out. You commit to a life of fitness that allows you to lose weight and keep it off over time. Suddenly losing weight is usually a sign of illness, not health. The body isn’t designed for rapid changes. Neither is the mind.
Implementing a healthy emotional life heals the heart and mind. We must give ourselves permission to be present in our pain rather than be in a hurry to heal it. No matter how evolved, conscious, or developed a person wants to be, pain should be explored, and trauma should be addressed. Our past takes time to unfold.
The goal is not to wait for it to unfold but to build a life of allowance. Remain open to growing into authenticity, where you see yourself clearly. No pain is too old or ugly to explore. Hiding, ignoring, or denying pain does not heal. Observing is key.
Time by itself does not heal. More than observation is required. Observation plus time make for a life of presence. Being present with a particular moment doesn’t shift your life. A life of presence shifts your moments.
The Personal Journey
Healing is personal rather than scripted. All instructions from books, sermons, and guides are available routes. They are not the transportation itself. When you buy an airline ticket from NY to LA, you hover around the airport and wait. At the designated time, you board the aircraft and try to relax for six hours as best you can. You will likely drift off to sleep after an attendant offers you a snack and you are tired from reading your book.
Transformation is not at all like flying, but driving. You must drive yourself to the land of inner peace. You hover in line to wait for your assigned car at the car rental place. Once the keys are placed in your hand, you are on your own. GPS will keep you on track, like your healing books, mentors, and meditations. However, guides hardly determine the trip.
You must pay attention to the traffic patterns at all times. You will make many decisions on your travel, which will take infinitely longer than 6 hours. Stop for gas, food, and rest can be preplanned. Still, you may detour to avoid congestion or follow a more scenic route. When you want to rest, you must come off the road.
The comfort of your travel will depend on your resources. How much money you spend on food, hotel, gas, and tolls can influence your motivation to travel slower or faster.
You may have rented a car with internet radio stations to keep you entertained for comfort. Your expertise as a driver will play a role as well. Averaging just ten miles an hour faster or driving two hours longer each day will save significant time. These differences will make every driver’s experience unique.
Each car driver can have a different experience traveling from NY to LA. However, they will have enough similar experiences to assure them they made the same trip. They will share the major highways and travel in the same direction. Still, how they position themselves as a traveler will yield unique experiences.
Substitute driving from NY to LA with the healing journey. You can see how long it takes is an unknown. Some travelers pull off the road every time they get into a new relationship or start a new job. Novice travelers get on the road without guidance and get lost a lot. Some travelers go too fast and crash. Many travelers are ill-prepared for the journey.
Conclusion
Healing is an adopted lifestyle, not an accomplishment. There are setbacks, triggers, and blind spots along the path. Healing isn’t measured by the traveler’s pace but by the traveler’s peace. Along the way, you must settle into the journey, unfazed by traffic jams, synchronizing with weather patterns, and in-tuned to your travel needs.
Shift the question to “How am I showing up on the healing journey right now?” Observe if you are currently showing up as a victim or attached to a label that is no longer useful. Settle in by being present with whatever comes up.
Where you are on the journey right now is exactly where you should be. You don’t need to figure out how to heal any faster. Healing is a natural process. You adopt a lifestyle of healing and allow nature to take its course.
We aim to live with authenticity and transparency as we bring presence to our internal and external responses to the world. We all travel this journey at our own pace and chart our course. The thing we have in common is the journey will last a lifetime.
