I saw a video on facebook yesterday advising me to PAY ATTENTION! It was mainly referring to the way we disengage from our family in order to watch television, write text messages, and …watch videos on facebook. However, it started me thinking about the way our society has trained us to tune out the world around us.
God created a world filled with love, but when we spend our lives with our noses glued to screens, we don’t notice the love that surrounds us. Even though we can now connect with people all over the world in seconds through these screens, we are becoming increasing isolated from the physical world that surrounds us, the communities in which we live, and our own families.
This video was asking us to take a moment to give our attention to others, as a gift. But what this video reminded me of was the gift that we can give ourselves as well, by paying attention to our world.
The world of television, text messages, and facebook has allowed us to have an endless supply of information, much of which is of no interest or importance to us. In our efforts to analyse such bulk information and sort the interesting and important from the boring and trivial, we have learned to scan information in fractions of a second in order to move onto the next piece of information.
As this video briefly mentions, our society at large is suffering from ADHD. My contention is that ADD (attention deficit disorder) is merely our way of coping with information overload. ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) in our society at large is caused by us rushing around trying to find the answers to life’s problems, which, if we learned to pay attention, we might find staring us in the face.
When I first awakened spiritually, I began attending a psychic development course. I also read a book by Sonia Choquette called The Psychic Pathway – A 12 week programme for developing your psychic gifts, and later did Sonia’s Psychic Situps online course. The first lesson that Sonia and other teachers taught me, in relation to developing my psychic gifts, was to pay attention. Before you can begin to notice the messages from your sixth sense, your angels and guides, you first have to start paying attention to the information coming from your five physical senses.
In our modern ADHD world, we rarely find the time to savour the delights which our senses can bring us.
When was the last time you listened to the rustling of leaves in the wind, the splash of waves on the shore, or the birds chirping or singing in a nearby tree? Have you stopped recently to take in a sunset, a star-filled sky, or last night’s full moon? Have you noticed the texture of leaves between your fingers or of sand or grass beneath your bare feet? When was the last time you took a moment to smell a flower, or really savour the taste of your food.
When we start to pay attention to the world around us, we begin to notice when a friend needs a healing prayer, when a child needs a word of encouragement, when our community needs a clean up, or when our environment needs a voice for change.
As well as noticing the needs of others, when we start paying attention, we notice that the world is filled with love. The trees, the animals, the Earth herself are all loving beings which emanate love.
You can see it in the eyes of your child or your pet, and feel it in the arms of your partner; you can feel it in the handshake of an acquaintance and see it in the smile of a stranger… if you are paying attention.
Once you begin paying attention, you realise that God, the angels, and your spirit guides are always working in your best interests and sending you messages all over the place.
The most obvious message I received came a few months after I had read the Dalai Lama’s book, Becoming Enlightened. Within this book there was a meditation/prayer which I had learned, which helped me to forgive others and to offer them compassion.
I had been thinking I needed to practise this meditation once more so that I didn’t forget it. The previous two days, when I pulled out a card from Doreen Virtue’s Ascended Masters Oracle Cards, the card from Siddhartha Gautama Buddha (from whom the Dalai Lama’s teachings originate) came out, saying “Meditate”. I knew I had to follow that advice when I was driving home over the Gateway Bridge, when, there, on a trailer right in front of my car, was the biggest Buddha statue I had ever seen, facing me as I drove.
This was a sign that I couldn’t ignore.
To others driving on the bridge that day, the statue may have held no special meaning. Others may have been receiving messages in the words on a bumper sticker, or the shape of a cloud.
You can only really know if the message is for you when you learn to recognise the feeling within your body that messages from your spirit helpers, your intuition, or God gives you. And this is the second lesson taught by all the teachers of psychic development:
How does it make you feel?
Until you start paying attention to your world around you, you can’t recognise how you normally feel in relation to it, and therefore can’t recognise your changed feelings when a sign appears.
I received a sign from God this week, which would have gone unnoticed, had I not recognised the feelings from within. I saw a Grace Bros Removals truck in the city, and immediately knew that this was a message about the Grace of God. Within the same block there was a truck belonging to a sign company. My mind didn’t register their name, only that this was a Sign from God.
The Grace of God is what has given us all of the blessings we can find in this world if we are paying attention, and Signs of it are everywhere.
This brings me to my third lesson for today:
Expect miracles.
God has provided, by her Grace, abundance in any form that you can wish for.
Pay attention, notice your feelings, follow the signs, and you will find miracles.
See the wildflower, not the weed; hear the sounds of joyous laughter, not a distraction from your texting; feel the drops of rain on your skin, not the umbrella in your hand; notice the smell and taste of your meal prepared with love, not what is happening on television.
When you start to pay attention to the world around you and start to notice signs from God and your spiritual helpers, you cannot help but feel loved. The more love that you feel, the more love you have to share with others, and the more that you can recognise that all of life is a miracle.
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