In one or Rupert Spira’s recent audio talks, he said, “Attention is awareness with a direction.” I listened to that sentence a second time. Something settled within me.
This body mind attends to detail easily. Prior to hearing Rupert’s talk, I misunderstood and thought there was something wrong with attentive focus–perhaps it required broadening, or even dropping–but now my understanding is different.
Awareness with a direction and wide-open spacious awareness–life calls for each in different situations. No need to think about what is required; life provokes the appropriate response.
This scroll–it’s about 3″ by 5″–is the Chinese glyph for “Grace.” It is made of over five thousand tiny beads: one example of awareness with a direction.
© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2012
the heart of the matter 
I saw on a serious Youtube essay that birds use one hemisphere of the brain to be looking for movements on the Earth, signs of worms to eat, and one hemisphere to look out for predators, competitors, matters of interest everywhere. So, deeply focused attention and the widest possible attention at the same time.
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I’ve released your comment from spam, so hopefully you won’t be spammed again! Thanks for your comments, Claire.
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Gorgeous scroll!
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Amrita, this was a lovely read for me. It is the start of my day, and such a nice way to start, even though there truly isn’t a “start”.
Love, Alese
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Thanks, Alese. I wish that your having an early morning blog to read didn’t mean that I’ve been sleeping poorly and up at night! But it does…
See you tomorrow at 5:15…
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Amrita, I have been meaning to email you LONG ago…I need some “attention”…or “awareness with direction”…I tend to be more of the “open awareness” variety… 🙂 FANTASTIC!!! I don’t have much time to write now because I need to “focus” on some tasks that need to be done (ie. have just decided to give a 70th birthday party for this body-mind which will hopefully happen in 2 weeks and the details of it overwhelm me a bit, even with help 🙂 ) and I have missed some of your posts which I want to go back to but I have REALLY treasured them in my heart and loved the time we spent together…and just wanted to let you know that you are VERY often in my thoughts… I was with Rupert last week at the Omega retreat which was wonderful…there seems to be more space now, even with the tasks…I would love to talk sometime when you have a chance…just to connect by voice…although, I must say, I feel connected to you anyway… Have a wonderful day, Amrita… Love, Arlene
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this is beautifully said – and it’s lovely to see your wonderful scroll again.
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you’re up! Thanks for your comment. Check your email…
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