Attention and Love 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB
It is very important for us to reflect on the meaning of attention, because attention is truly at the centre of human meaning. It is not about technology, it is not about wealth, it is not about fame, it is not about success. All of those things become totally unimportant when we are facing the crisis of life or death. What matters is this meeting, this encounter, through love, through attention, with each other and therefore creating a portal, a door through which God can enter into the world. And that is why every one of our meditation groups and our national communities can be and are, in fact, a portal, a door, whether they meet in a parish, whether they meet in a home, whether they meet in school, whether they meet online, they are a simple but wonderful opening to the Divine, allowing the Divine love, the Divine attention, to enter into the human condition, into the, into the world as we know it.
So that is why the first level of consciousness that we encounter when we meditate, the first step of self-knowledge is a bit of a shock because we find that we have very limited capacity for attention. And this goes on for about 40 or 50 years. We discover how distracted we are at that first level of attention. And a lot of people give up meditating immediately. That is the first level of consciousness that we have to confront, it’s our high level of distraction. That is one strand that we are going to follow during these retreats, the levels of consciousness.
The second strand that relates to this is, is more theological, the levels of consciousness, we could say, well, this is how we experience it psycho-logically. But theologically, we are going to look at the second level relating to it, which are fruits of the Spirit. And you remember what the first fruit of the Spirit is –love.
I’d like you to just take one thought away — it’s the equivalence of love and attention. They are the same thing. To pay attention is to love; to love is to pay attention.
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, §1, in The Philokalia, Vol. 1, pp. 162–198 in the English translation by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware.
Watchfulness is a spiritual method which, if sedulously practiced over a long period, completely frees us, with God’s help, from impassioned thoughts, impassioned words and evil actions. It leads, in so far as this is possible, to a sure knowledge of the inapprehensible God, and helps us to penetrate the divine and hidden mysteries. It enables us to fulfil every divine commandment in the Old and New Testaments and bestows upon us every blessing of the age to come.
