We have to learn to pay attention. [T]his be so powerful because in the act of attention we transcend the ego. Fully absorbed in our attention, we leave self behind. [ . . .] Learning to attend, we learn to see with absolute clarity what is before us. We learn to hear what is said to us. In other words, we learn to be fully open to reality. [ . . . .] Without such attention, without such selfless attention we can never pass over, never fully see or hear or experience what is.
Learning to say the mantra, we learn to leave our limited, distorted perceptions behind. We become absorbed into the divine reality, the oneness that Jesus speaks of in his great prayer in the Gospel of John: ‘that we may be one.” [ . . . .] Saying the mantra is simply our beginning on the path to this selfless attention, the searchlight of consciousness off ourselves, forward. We become like the eye that cannot see itself, that sees all.
After meditation: “When We Look” by Annie Lighthart in PAX (Newberg, Oregon: Fernwood Press, 2021), p. 15.
When We Look
When we look long at one another,
we soften, we relent, listen,
might forgive. We allow for silence
–and when we see each other,
are known, and in that moment
might change
though nothing has moved
or been spoken.
There are some who say
The walls cannot be broken,
but suddenly we are in a free place,
and the fields
that extend from its center
stretch for miles
as if out of the pupil and the iris
of that momentary kingdom.
