Focus

Having written about how I was feeling my limits with the cold and lack of sun last week and focussing on inner warmth and inner sun, wonderfully, within a couple of days the temperature went up and the sun came out. What joy.

I had thought I was probably a being a bit soft but was comforted to read over the next few days that others had been feeling the same and were equally focussed and spurred on by nature doing its thing.

I was reminded of the well known awareness of where you put your focus change can follow. Outcome often depends very much on what state of being underlies the focus, but its a simple thing and we often do it without being aware.

When my children were at Steiner school I thought it really interesting that when the teachers had their weekly meetings to discuss how the children were doing there was a specific awareness that if a child was struggling for example, all staff would explore this in a caring and positive manner and that without any other implementation other than simply focussing their care towards the whole child that literally within days positive change could be witnessed.

I have also seen it flow the other way in school settings and elsewhere of course, that if a specific ‘problem’ is focussed on by only seeing the problem or imagining a problem and going over that, this can intensify the issue or even increase the number of those experiencing or creating that issue.

Quantum physicists have noticed that almost even before a scientist’s attention goes towards something, changes happen in the thing. Many from Carl Jung to Carlo Rovelli have explored and written about this in all their varied interesting ways. I like Rovelli’s quote that ‘Reality is not things, but connections, there is no ultimate reality, no ultimate theory’. In other words infinite possibilites, but the quality of the connections make the design.

It certainly isn’t a new discovery of course, ancient wisdom was well aware, but as humans we always seem to need to be reminded / reconnected and to redefine things but it is wonderful that our perspective is broadening to explore this fundamental conversation between all things from the micro to the macro.

This is not to say that we are sole creators or necessarily totally responsible for outcomes. Another perspective is that when something comes into our awareness, the change is already occurring despite us, by natural force of nature or otherwise and we are merely observers of the leaving of something or facilitators of a new direction that change may take, we can either latch onto it mentally and put an identity on it or we can centre in stillness allowing the transformation to something perhaps greater than we can imagin.

We could certainly apply that to the world today and even our own health.

There is so much that may grab our attention, the challenge is to choose where to put our focus and whether to open to infinite possibilities or mentally constrain ourselves. Although a fraction within the whole macrocosm we must not forget that through the connectivity of all things our choices are powerful and a specific focus in stillness can absolutely facilitate positive change.