How do you know your thoughts, feelings, body sensations, or perceptions of the world around you? How do you experience anything at all?
Imagine this scene…
My friend and I are visiting a quaint small town, walking along the main street.
I stop to admire beautiful bronze sculptures in a store window, while my friend is absorbed in exquisite paintings across the street.
As I glance over at him, I notice something unusual: a clown juggling four dumbbells while riding a unicycle down the street.
Mesmerized, I can’t take my eyes off the scene.
The clown rides past me and disappears.
I look back at my friend, still focused on the paintings.
In that moment, our experiences were completely different, though we were on the same street. Why?
The Power of Attention
What I attended to, that was my experience.
My friend experienced what he attended to.
What you attend to defines your experience, and what you don’t attend to cannot become part of your experience.
When you attend to a thought, that thought becomes your experience.
When you attend to a feeling, you experience that feeling.
Your attention is the key to what you know and what you experience in life.
Attention is like a light source in darkness.
You point attention to something, and it gets lit up in the darkness, to make it known to you, to make you aware of it.
Attention is like a power source.
You plug attention to something, and it gets turned on, so to say, and you become aware of it in your experience.
Attention is a sliver of awareness, the essential consciousness that enables you to be aware of anything at all in life.
With this clear understanding about the nature of the power of attention, let us see how it can help reveal your inner power, which is inner peace, as your direct experience.
The Monkey Mind
If inner peace is ever present and unchanging, as we’ve discussed in the last article of the series, what obscures inner peace in your experience?
Have you noticed how quickly your mind jumps from one thought to the next?
That’s the ‘monkey mind’ at work, rapidly hopping across thoughts without a clear purpose, like a monkey leaping from branch to branch (hence, the name).
This constant motion of the mind clouds the experience of inner peace, just like clouds cover the vast blue sky.
It may feel like you can’t stop thinking or control your mind’s movement.
From as few as four thoughts a minute to as many as twenty thoughts a minute or higher, the mind can be constantly occupied with thoughts.
Attention, the power source, feeds all these thoughts, along with feelings, body sensations, and sense perceptions every single minute.
That’s a lot of wandering attention!
How to Cure the Monkey Mind
The root cause of the ‘monkey mind’ is wandering attention.
Your attention fuels one thought after another, creating the flood of thoughts you experience.
To cure the monkey-mind, you need to still the wandering attention, allowing it to become single pointed.
This is where silence meditation comes in.
In silence meditation, we practice resting our attention single pointedly in silence.
Rather than battling or resisting thoughts, which is like trying to fight clouds in the sky, we simply withdraw attention from them.
In one stroke, we disconnect attention from thoughts and direct it toward the silence within us.
The Profound Benefits of Silence Meditation
When attention is single-pointedly placed in silence, the seat of inner peace which is your inner power, your inner power becomes your experience.
The more you cultivate silence meditation as a steady practice, the more you strengthen the experience of your inner power in your daily life.
Through a single practice, you can cure the ‘monkey mind’, reclaim your inner power, and cultivate the art of single-pointed attention.
As the monkey-mind subsides, you experience calmness, clarity, wisdom, courage, strength, creativity, and compassion… all the qualities you need to transform your life and flow with it effortlessly.
Calmness and clarity help you stay composed during difficult conversations or stressful work environments.
Creativity and wisdom help you find creative solutions and make wise decisions for the challenges you face.
Courage and strength help you beat back selfdoubt and boldly engage in doing what is needed.
Compassion enables you to be kind to yourself and others in your thoughts, words, and actions.
The Incredible Value of Single Pointed Attention
Single-pointed attention is a lost art, but it can reveal depths in life that many miss.
Here’s a glimpse of what happens when you pay single-pointed attention in your life:
1. Pay attention to listening…
And your presence will be real love. This will help you deepen relationships with others and be a real loving support for them.
2. Pay attention to thankfulness…
And you’ll uncover real contentment. This will help you recognize and root in the blessings that are already in your life, shifting your from wanting to having.
3. Pay attention to any feeling…
And it will reveal the real wisdom it brings. This will help to understand the wisdom behind any consistently occurring feeling such as fear, anger, anxiety, and others.
4. Pay attention to any object…
And you’ll see its real beauty. This will help you to truly appreciate the beauty of the world you are in.
5. Pay attention to silence…
And you’ll experience real peace. This will help you be calm in the midst of life’s storms and engage with life from your inner power.
6. Pay attention to the sense of “I”…
And you’ll find its innate emptiness. This will help you experientially realize what this “I” is that is in the center of all of life experiences.
7. Pay attention to attending…
And you’ll realize the real YOU… pristine awareness. This will help you experientially realize your true nature.
Single-pointed attention, when it becomes natural and effortless through steady practice, can enable the experience of the profound essence that underlies all experiences.
It can lead you to the essence of your being, the real YOU, your true self.
Single-pointed attention is a necessary skill that is needed in the deeper journey to Self Realization.
What is the Real YOU?
Unconditional love,
Causeless happiness,
Unchanging peace,
Incomparable beauty,
Unfathomable emptiness,
Pristine awareness,
The ground of being,
The eternal silence …
These are but different names
For the real YOU
The wholeness,
The No-otherness.
The paradox of the journey is this
You already are the real YOU
That being so, Dear One,
How can there be a journey?
After all, what can you even do
To take a step toward yourself?
A journey is needed because
You have yet to experientially realize
Who you really are, and
What your real nature is, and
Until you do, it is vital that
You pursue authentic practices
That connect you with your inner power
And help you root in it
Silence meditation is one such
Authentic practice that
Transforms your understanding of
Your inner power which is inner peace
And transforms your experiences
And prepares the ground for
The eventual Self Realization.
About the Author
Sundar Kadayam is an author, spiritual teacher, mentor, and healer. Midway through his 34 year career as a technologist and entrepreneur, life circumstances pushed him into an unlikely journey toward healing and awakening. His offerings provide guidance on self care and healing, self transformation, and self realization.
Sundar’s Website: Being YOU with Sundar Kadayam – Resources for self-care and healing, continuous self-transformation, and Self-Realization
Sundar’s Bio: About Sundar Kadayam
Sundar’s Writings: Articles and Pointers to Being YOU – with Sundar Kadayam
The Peace Practice: The Peace Practice – Simple Meditation to Cultivate Inner Peace (sundar.com)
Life Coach Code Interview: Find Life Coach | Meet Sundar Kadayam: How to Go from Weakness to True Power and Limitless Potential? (lifecoachcode.com)
Related Articles from Sundar:
- The Cure for Monkey Mind (sundar.com)
- Why is the Experience of Peace Fleeting? (sundar.com)
- Quieting the Mind – Why Meditation can be Frustrating, and Why it Need Not (sundar.com)
- The Power of Silence (sundar.com)
- The Sacred Silence (sundar.com)
- The Sacred Silence – II (sundar.com)
- The Mystic Melody (sundar.com)
- The Secret of Rested Attention (sundar.com)
- Why should you meditate regularly? (sundar.com)
- Being Free of Worries – The Peace Practice (sundar.com)
