Focus: Intention with action. It is the force that is behind every single great achievement that the human race has accomplished. Focusing is honing the energy of your mind like a magnifying glass, transfixed just over the horizon of space and time. Your focus is like a battery, and whatever you focus on grows. If you do not use this energy in an efficient manner with pure intentions, the full potential of your consciousness can never be fully realized, as you are using the energy from the air you breathe, the food you eat, and your very life force itself on things that do not directly serve you.
The ability to focus is something that you can cultivate, but without an equanimous understanding behind the deep seated patterns of your thought, you will be inevitably fighting an uphill battle. I can remember a few years ago, when I began practice of mindfulness meditation to help my mind focus itself to a higher purpose that I wanted to fulfill in this life.
The problem that arises when one begins to cultivate themselves in any sort of transformative positive direction, is that you create a gap between you and where you want to be. This inevitably causes fear, doubt, and negative self justification to seep their way in your brains neuro-pathways. I realized very recently that when I naturally encountered road blocks in my journey, it was directly related to what I was actually focusing on, which wasn’t always what I’d intended.
When you begin to train your mind to focus and inevitably get frustrated, you aren’t actually focusing on the goal you are striving for, but rather the frustration that you have created for yourself in your mind. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself when I realized the extent of this as I was trying to cultivate focus – but what I was actually focusing on was my own inability to focus. This naturally creates a paradoxical loop in your thought patterns, and because what you focus on grows, you are actually becoming very adept at not focusing. This type of thinking and unproductive self talk plagues an innumerable amount of people in our society, as they are mired by the standards and expectations they believe they have to adhere to for fitting into our society. A constant onslaught of comparison and need to measure up to our mechanized systems of governance and professional fields inevitably ends in nihilism and frustration for a countless number of high potential light beings. Sometimes it seems the more you want to better yourself, the more distant you actually become from that goal, and the reason for this is purely due to the allocation of your mental energy.
It can be hard to catch oneself in a loop of self degradation and misuse of your mental energy, but if you’re like me and have dreams to serve this planet and our species, you want to become something bigger than your current self, but if you are not using your mental energy properly there is no way for this new way of being to unfold. If you come from a place of frustration and lacking in your goal, your energy is being used up to sabotage the very thing you are striving to create.
There is a good trick to use to help identify these patterns before they cause you to drift too far away from your point of focus. Whenever you feel any sort of negativity or discursiveness occurring in your mind, simply ask yourself, “What am I focusing on right now?” Chances are if you are asking yourself this question you are focusing on your original intention. Instead of focusing on your goal, you are unconsciously projecting the powerful energy of your mind to things which are actually completely counter to your goal altogether. You can truly be your own worst enemy in this sense.
With diligent practice of being mindful with where you are putting your focus, I guarantee you will see a positive shift in your goals, happiness and general outlook on life. It blows my mind how much this comes up in my thought patterns. Reassessing yourself by asking what you are focusing on is the only way that I have found to consistently be able to bring myself back to awareness when I am trying to complete a set task. Addictions, being judgmental of yourself and others, and the inability to effectively carry out your mission in life is directly related to misdirected focus, and if you want to accomplish anything of great importance this must be corrected.
The good news is there is no need to keep fighting against yourself anymore. There is no reason to look at what you have already done, because again that will only project your energy outside of the present moment, which is like a sprinkler that shoots its water out on to the street, and directly into a drainage pipe; it simply does not serve a purpose. So now you have a choice, you can keep listlessly letting life happen to you, or you can begin to cultivate a new consciousness in which positivity of intention causes life to be something that you do, everyday.
When you begin being mindful of where you are putting your focus, the positivity that results from this grows, and with time realizing your potential becomes easier and easier.
A practice of open eyed meditation can greatly accelerate this process. Sit comfortably, breathe normally, and fix your gaze on a single point in your field of vision. Do this for at least 10 minutes. If you begin to get frustrated, ask yourself what you’re focusing on. I can almost guarantee that your not focusing on the point not the wall, but how hard meditation is, and a thousand and one other excuses that your ego puts in place to try and protect you from your own potential and fear of failure. But when you let your focus drift to these low vibrational thoughts, you are actually creating this failure in your mind. Afterwards, all you really got out of your meditation was that very failure you were afraid of. If you focus on the cultivation of your focus, rather than your current lack of focus, I think you be surprised at how quickly your brains’ neuro-pathways reprogram to make a you a happier, more effective human.
If you keep letting yourself be consumed by negative points of focus, you are only delaying your own happiness and personal fulfillment. I recommend getting out of your own way, accept things as they are, and direct your focus to abundance rather than lacking; and by all means, shoot for the moon! When your mind is focused on the highest possibly reality for yourself, there is no other way than to move forward into that reality. Don’t doubt for one second that its too difficult, daunting or impossible – this only wastes more of your precious mental energy. If you do, don’t beat yourself up about it, as this spends even more of your energy as well.
Negativity feeds negativity, but positivity also feeds positivity. The more you do it the more it becomes present in your life. So the question then becomes, what do you want to grow for yourself in this life?
