You are what you love, and you love whatever you are giving your attention to. Eastern Spiritual psychologies profess that whatever you give your attention to, is what you are making your God. If, for example, you spend all your time thinking about that next cigarette, then you have just made that next nicotine fix your God. If you are worrying about: your bills, your daughter’s boyfriend with the spiked hair and nose ring, the price of oil, the likelihood of another terrorist attack or CNN’s reported “fear du jour”, then you love worrying and stressing out about your life. Surprising isn’t it?!

The link between love and attention is synonymous, because of the Eastern definition of our Spiritual nature. Spirit is awareness itself. Spirit is inseparable from awareness, consciousness, or any other buzzword you’d like to use for it. Consciousness is what we bring with us when we come to the Earth plane. It is also what we take with us when the body expires and we shed the mortal coil. Awareness is our Divinity, our God juice so to speak. Therefore whatever we give our attention to, we are empowering with life-giving energy.

The Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) offers great practical advice when it comes to how to manage our awareness in our every day lives. Swedenborg suggested that we only give our attention to what lives in Heaven.

Swedenborg started out as a great scientist. As such, he’d rather we prove this shared wisdom to ourselves than take his word for it. When we as Spirit adopt a physical body, it comes complete with a nervous system. Swedenborg says that the purpose of this sensory feedback mechanism is that it keeps us real about what we are giving our attention to, because now we have to feel it. So how can we be sure if we are surrendering our attention to something that truly has our best interest at heart? Well, how does it make you feel? When you tell yourself that you do not, and will never have enough time, love, money or opportunity, how does that make you feel? When you convince yourself that you need to foster a story, with your attention, that your butt is so big it is generating its own gravitational field, just to keep you from devouring another box of Twinkies, ask yourself how does that communication make you feel? Could there possibly be a kinder, gentler route one could navigate awareness through such as, “Body, beloved friend, I love you, I care for you and I will only give you the highest food respect I can, because I value your healthy and well-being.” How does the communication you give your attention to feel?

When we run an inner dialogue that qualifies everyone on the freaking planet as having the I.Q. of an amoeba, except ourselves of course, how does that makes us feel? Frustrated? Annoyed? Superior in a mean spirited way?

What we give our attention to is the highest form of inner Spiritual alchemy available to anyone. The physical, outer-world based alchemy reality is simply a metaphor for turning the heaviest of our thoughts, the lead, into the purest gold of our focused attention. And unlike the arduous exterior atomic version of alchemy, the inner can be accomplished in an instant, in the blink of an eye, without expensive equipment, nasty bad smelling acids, or cluttered laboratories. Inner alchemy happens as quickly as it takes to release the dark and turn towards the Light. Another perk of inner alchemy is that all the inner gold you make, you actually get to take with you!

When you are watching your mind, your attention, you are also in the present moment. Being aware of where you are going with your mind, is like strapping on a seat belt that keeps you firmly in the here and now driver’s seat. The times when you lose track of what you are doing with your attention, is when you are most likely to start projecting off into the future, or withdrawing to relive some past event. Watching the flow of our awareness keeps the present moment on the radar screen. Letting the mind wander without consciousness to what you are loving, what you are making your God, is when the ‘you are here’ red dot drops off the radar, and the plane starts to lose altitude. This is the entire purpose behind practicing any form of meditation; it keeps you in the now, watching the thoughts come up and practice letting them go. If you never practice opening your mind and letting go of your “stories”, how will you have that skill when you need it?

Consider the expression “paying” attention. Like Swedenborg says, you love whatever you give your attention to. Aligning ourselves with the truth that you are what you love, and you love whatever you are giving your attention to, is why every Spiritual creature is having a physical experience. Having the Blessed opportunity to feel the truth of that higher Spiritual reality, in an arena we cannot fake, is why the Earth was created. Surrendering our free will and attention only and solely to what resides in Heaven, no matter what the physical world throws at you, is the life purpose of every person, everywhere, throughout all of time. If all of that is not enough to convince you that watching your attention is the definition of Spiritually maturity and success...then I've got some property in Heaven, I’d like to sell you!