Quotes about Attention

Meditation is the process by which we go about deepening our attention and awareness, refining them, and putting them to greater practical use in our lives.

This is the case because, as we noted earlier, it is not the breath that is most important here, but the awareness itself. And the awareness can be of any aspect of your experience, not just your breathing—because it is always the same awareness, whatever the chosen object or objects of attention.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts…. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family.

The way you silence fear is to give attention to faith.

As long as I have people's attention, I can't stop. You can't put the public on hold, because they might not be there when you get back. I have a pathological fear of stopping.

For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.

No one sees what is before his feet: they scan the tracks of heaven.

Prayer turns us into first-class noticers. It helps us see what God wants us to notice. The more you pray, the more you notice; the less you pray, the less you notice. It's as simple as that. Let me explain how

We usually hear what we want to hear and turn a deaf ear to everything else. But remember the package deal? If we don't listen to everything God has to say, we eventually won't hear anything He has to say. And we probably need to hear most what we want to hear least. But this I know for sure: His tone of voice is always loving. Sometimes it's tough love in the form of rebuke or discipline, but it's loving, nonetheless.

Pain can be a professor theology. Pain can be a marriage counselor. Pain can be a life coach. Nothing gets our full attention like pain. It breaks down false idols and purifies false motives. It reveals where we need to heal, where we need to grow. It refocuses priorities like nothing else. And pain ins part and parcel of God's sanctification process in our lives.

Obedience starts with a pierced ear. It's tuning into God's frequency and turning up the volume. It's obeying His whispers, even if a thousand people are screaming something different. 'Tell me to what you pay attention,' said the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, 'and I will tell you who are you.' You will eventually be shaped in the image of the loudest voice in your life. Genuine listening is ultimately an act of submission.