Usually it is what is right before you that you fail to notice. It escapes you.
“Nothing escaped his notice: attention, observation, awareness, consciousness, perception; regard, consideration, scrutiny; watchfulness, vigilance, attentiveness” from a Thesaurus.
Notice finds its root in the Latin. Notus means knowledge. You take notice in order to know.
You become what you give your attention to. This is the blessing and the challenge for the human soul recognized by all mystics. What do you give your attention to? What do you take notice of?
If red has my full attention I become red. It is a wonderful (full of wonder) experience, enriching, ennobling, enthusing to become red for at least a brief moment in your life.
La Orana Maria
Paul Gauguin 1891
I once saw a retrospective of Paul Gauguin’s paintings and I will never forget the feeling I had in one gallery of the exhibit. The small square room contained eight paintings. I was overcome with pure color. I became all the colors I saw on the canvases and I also became Gauguin and his Tahiti just for a moment. I loved this “being” and knowing what was not me. But the moment was fraught with being a stranger in a strange land. A disturbing combination of the presence of other and absence of self.
When I had that experience I was not prepared. I had not heard or understood “You become what you give your attention to.” It was disorienting and exalting…very, very strange.
Noticing things will give you this experience. Noticing things will change your destiny, expand your reality, alter your truth, tumble you into being in love, being a cloud, being a patch of moss. Noticing with your full attention opens your soul, offers you miracles of knowing, and slips you into the strangeness of the “not self.”
Sunday was the festival of Pentecost. How does what happened 2000 years ago, live in our souls today?
Inner Pentecost, is the act of giving your full attention to another human being and becoming what you notice. Then you can speak their language, feel their feelings, understand their karma and see their destiny…because you have let them into yourself without barrier just for a miraculous moment.
How do we then integrate that moment of being the other when self suddenly comes rushing back in? How do we transform a miraculous moment into an evolving wisdom within our own awareness?
If you practice attending to the archetypal human being (What is the human being?) and the nuances of individuality in your own humanity (Who am I?), you will have no difficulty integrating the moment of becoming the other into your experience of being yourself. You will have found your way to becoming one with all others in extraordinary moments.
Shortly after my Gauguin moment, I began the spiritual research into the mysteries of selfhood that I share through Imagine Self. I have seen and felt over and over the sacred paradox living in letting nothing about yourself escape notice. The more you know yourself, the more you can free yourself to love all others and the more you know the other, the more you know yourself…the sacred experience of Inner Pentecost.
Don’t let your Self escape your notice.
Please share your miracle moments of becoming what you gave your attention to in the comments below. Encourage others with your own experience.
Imagine Self, all the courses, the blogposts, and working with me personally, are paths to Inner Pentecost, to noticing your Self and becoming the miracle of I.
Until June 1st, Inner Mother Inner Father is offered at a 20% discount. This extensive and transformative Imagine Self course normally costs $247. Until June 1st the cost is $197.60. You can also pay in three monthly installments of $69.60. Learn about the content of the course and register here.
