“Turning Within” Oil On Canvas (Detail) by Louis Parsons.
Seeds of Fire
“Seeds of fire,
Burn my soul.
Uncreated. Unrealised.
Time to turn within.”
Your imagination is a seed bed of ideas. At the centre of each of these seeds, there is pure, pulsating life.
Not much. But just enough. Just enough to keep it alive.
Germinating these ideas takes two core conditions of growth.
The first is silence. In the darkness of pure silence, these seeds absorb the energy that they crave to live, to thrive, to become.
The second is attention. By paying attention to these ideas, a supercharging of the growth process occurs. The light of attention reacts and combines with the dark, sustaining, moist earth of silence, and a kind of nuclear fusion occurs.
The earth encased centre of life, begins to break through its confines, and feed off its own dormancy. It transforms from a stage of tough, stoic crystallisation into vulnerable, but resilient life.
The Lens Of Attention
Whatever you pay attention to flourishes. Your attention is like a lens.
It focuses light.
It defocuses light.
By focussing consistently and intently on one thing, you focus the diffuse energy that is suspended in the air around you, into a single locus of fiery power.
This white hot centre can be used to burn through obstacles, or to activate the centre of your core ideas.
Similarly, you can allow your attention to become diffuse, soft and open. It's in moments of diffuse attention that you can gather energy from a wider sphere of knowing. You may notice the diffuse waves hanging in the air around you… non-focussed… allowing the energy and information it carries to seep into you. This receptivity is often when some of the widest and deepest realisations of life can occur.
However, these realisations will only remain with you.. unless you pay attention, focus, and find a way to share them.
You can pay attention to anything in your life. The relationship you have with your son, the conditions of your business, the flower beds in your garden.
As you do, it will flourish.
At the very least, it will be helped onto its next stage of growth. Whether that is fruition, or letting it go into the natural cycle of decay, and return to its source.
The Cause Of Suffering
Its whatever you are not paying attention to that is currently the central cause of your suffering.
The unspoken, uncreated… the inactivated seeds that lie within your imagination. Eventually they begin to scream for attention.
They begin to burn. They never really die. They get constrained, and compressed by layers of life experience and neglect.
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth that which is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
The Gospel Of Thomas.
It takes a great deal of courage hold high the torch of attention and enter the cave of neglect within you. Focus your attention on just one of these neglected seeds.
You know which one.
It's the one that screams the loudest.
Take it into your hands, and pay attention to it. Watch, mesmerised, as it feeds off the light and air that you provide it with, and observe in wonder what it has in store for you, and those around you
Don’t worry. Even the most neglected idea will still love you for the power of your life giving attention.
To exercise your imagination, try this free online course.