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@ Daryn Cavalier
2023-04-28 23:03:04Time and Attention
The ultimate gift in the human experience is that of a finite life and a linear experience of time. Everyone has a birth and a death filled with a sequence of in between events which unfold in a linear fashion. From this Truth arises another; As a Human the most valuable thing you possess is your time.
Time, the way we interact with, the way we perceive it, is what sets us apart from the rest of Nature. We have the ability to apply work to the present moment on a continuous basis which results in an accumulation of that work and a final output that is the sum total of the applied work. Instead of foraging or hunting for food for the next, immediate meal I can apply my labor or my work to grow crops to provide for myself with future meals. It is this thought process which allows for advancement or progress. If we apply our labor intelligently to solve for survival needs then we will have successfully liberated our time which can then be spent to achieve or accomplish specialized tasks. This is a direct improvement on the individuals life, as he or she now has more time to pursue and engage in things the individual personally finds to be “life enriching”.
The next step in this process is to collaborate with other humans. To divide the labor amongst a community and allow for a greater liberation of time resulting in a greater ability to perform specialized tasks. This further enriches the life of the individual and the community itself. From this collaboration emerges an economy.
Money has to be one of the most important technologies man has ever created. Although, I think Money may be an emergent property of higher levels of consciousness and we, as a species, are simply harnessing it.
Money is the discovery of an emergent phenomena resulting from the interaction of individuals whom have evolved to possess the ability to perceive time in such a way that allows the application of work across it to archive desired outputs.
A consciousness that has this ability to perceive time in this way is what allows, albeit limited, capacity to understand the divine.
The directed spending of time happens through an avenue which we refer to as attention. The intentional directing of an individual's attention is a divine expression.
Social media is a psychological surgery that invasively enters our energetic body and extracts our attention.
There is no more sacred a gift we can offer than to give another human our direct and focused attention.
Controlling and directing mental power and concentration, also called attention, is the mechanism which allows anything and all things to be accomplished. Whether it is an lion that cooperatively hunts with its pride or a human that sits down to read a book. Nothing can be accomplished without focused attention. When an individual is able to direct mental energy away from the material world and focus on the transcendental, our perspective on the world, the universe, and our place within it begins to shift. Thus it is the focused attention of mental energy that allows for transcendental experience.
I would argue that an individual’s ability to focus attention is correlative with the level of overall joy and satisfaction the individual has within life. Attention and its direction is a skill similar to that of any other, that is to say, the more we practice the better we will become. There are numerous activities that we engage in throughout our day that are either strengthening or weakening our ability to focus our attention.
As a society we have, for the most part, lost the ability to control our own attention. We have given our power to do so away to social media platforms and the A.I. algorithms that govern them. Short videos now dominate the social media landscape with something like an average video length in the range of 30 seconds. The using social media and expecting to be able to control your mind would be similar to preparing for a marathon with bed rest. Social media is a drug that over-stimulates the mind and teaches it to seek small, rapid bursts of pleasure. This ultimately diminishes the ability we have to focus on everything in our lives. Frequent use of social media is detrimental to our ability to focus our attention.
My life is the most important thing to me and I want to perform as well as I can within it. The better I am able to focus my attention the better my life will become. That means I need to do things that improve my ability to focus my attention. The amount of attention and patience I am able to give to my spouse, children and family. My ability to perform work at my job. My ability to learn from and adapt to my environment. Are all affected and ultimately diminished as my ability to focus my attention decreases.