William James, founder of American psychology, a philosopher said, ‘Reality is where you place your attention.’ Attention matters. The loss of our capacity to pay attention (our distracted culture, the fact that we spend an average of three or four hours on our mobile devices every day, young people are spending at a very vulnerable age, hours, hours and hours on their social media) this is a fragmentation of our fundamental capacity which is attention: to be able to listen, to be able to observe, to be able to engage, to feel empathy, to see the wonder of the world in which we live and the relationships in which we are connected. Attention is the essence of prayer. Meditation is the training of our mind and heart, two sources of wisdom in the human consciousness. It’s the training of mind and heart in this capacity for attention.
( Sources of Wisdom by Laurence Freeman OSB )
