Beautiful connection. In Greek, psyche literally meant "breath"... not as metaphor, but existentially, the animating force itself. Your framing of attention as "inhale" and surrender as "exhale" is powerful and captures the same rhythm: sort of gather & release. Ethically, it could be understood as In-taking (learning and obsorbing) and out-giving (limiting one's ego and altuissric). To hold either one too tightly is to interrupt or block the very movement that constitutes being "alive"...
Now I am thinking to expand this notion onto culture!
A "living culture" breathes: it takes in from the diversity of the past i.e., traditions, rituals, practices, influences, the fullness of what came before.. And it puts forward creative avenues for individual and community, releasing and providing what it has gathered into new forms without losing coherence. So, a living culture doesn't merely preserve or merely innovate... It pays attention to the past, lives in present and by surrenders it offers novel creative possibilities for future...
This piece has genuine clarity of mind. It is patient. It does not show off. It knows that the subject is subtle, and so it chooses a prose rhythm that mirrors the thing it is describing: the gradual recognition of inner imbalance. That is well judged.
The central insight is good and true:
attention and surrender are not opposing tasks but one movement wrongly divided.
That is the spine of the piece, and it holds.
The best section, to my ear, is this idea:
“the problem is not the absence of the rhythm. It is the interference with it.”
There. That line has philosophical clarity and spiritual humility. It also has reach beyond the contemplative frame.
☯️When I try to think of a balance between attention & surrender, I find attention fairly easy but surrender not so easy — it takes many breaths to remember to just put all the daily requests & demands (& interruptions!) in God’s hands, & trust things will be OK.🌅
It is really helpful to think of attention and surrender as an inhaleand exhale. Thank you for that word picture and thank you for continuing to share your wisdom.
It took me getting drop-kicked to my knees 6 years ago today with covid (which is still an uninvited & unwanted guest) for me to be in any kind of shape to even contemplate attention & surrender. I had moments during in-depth shamanic retreats & firmly gentle yoga mediation practices with very real, very genuinely grounded, deeply intuitive teachers that anchored me in moments of true awareness & opened mind & heart to ways of being that led to truths never experienced before. And eventually my job, my life, the world distracted me away from my learning & I’m grateful, hard to believe, for being physically forced to stop & return to the only things in my life that had really brought me to a sense of being that could help me not drown in self-pitying despair.
The nuances in your descriptions of attention & surrender draw me back to re-read & re-focus (brain fog is not my helpful companion & also can be a slack excuse) & i am far from any of this flowing naturally & easily. Yet there is already a change without conscious focus at times that sneaks up on me & gracefully surprises me where both attention & surrender are concerned & i am enveloped in an awareness that’s alien & familiar simultaneously.
I have much to learn & probably far to go in embracing a way of being that wasn’t present in most of my life but it is radically better & I’m not drowning in chaos like i was 6 years ago, which helped nothing heal. I may not have attention & surrender down pat but i have peace & hope replacing the tunnel vision of chaos & despair that had become a daily routine.
There is no limit to the gratitude of how these roadmaps of wisdom gems have altered me & consequently resurrected the laugh & the hope that had vanished. A free life saving gift (coffee doesn’t count) i never counted on & will continue to unwrap as i learn more. I am so grateful for what you wrote, so simple but often not so easy. Well worth it.
Beautiful connection. In Greek, psyche literally meant "breath"... not as metaphor, but existentially, the animating force itself. Your framing of attention as "inhale" and surrender as "exhale" is powerful and captures the same rhythm: sort of gather & release. Ethically, it could be understood as In-taking (learning and obsorbing) and out-giving (limiting one's ego and altuissric). To hold either one too tightly is to interrupt or block the very movement that constitutes being "alive"...
Now I am thinking to expand this notion onto culture!
A "living culture" breathes: it takes in from the diversity of the past i.e., traditions, rituals, practices, influences, the fullness of what came before.. And it puts forward creative avenues for individual and community, releasing and providing what it has gathered into new forms without losing coherence. So, a living culture doesn't merely preserve or merely innovate... It pays attention to the past, lives in present and by surrenders it offers novel creative possibilities for future...
Ruach in Hebrew means both breath and spirit. -Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter.
I haven’t even read it yet but i was just praying about that last nite so whatever you wrote, thank you in advance for answering my prayer
This piece has genuine clarity of mind. It is patient. It does not show off. It knows that the subject is subtle, and so it chooses a prose rhythm that mirrors the thing it is describing: the gradual recognition of inner imbalance. That is well judged.
The central insight is good and true:
attention and surrender are not opposing tasks but one movement wrongly divided.
That is the spine of the piece, and it holds.
The best section, to my ear, is this idea:
“the problem is not the absence of the rhythm. It is the interference with it.”
There. That line has philosophical clarity and spiritual humility. It also has reach beyond the contemplative frame.
Thank you for this piece.
☯️When I try to think of a balance between attention & surrender, I find attention fairly easy but surrender not so easy — it takes many breaths to remember to just put all the daily requests & demands (& interruptions!) in God’s hands, & trust things will be OK.🌅
It is really helpful to think of attention and surrender as an inhaleand exhale. Thank you for that word picture and thank you for continuing to share your wisdom.
It took me getting drop-kicked to my knees 6 years ago today with covid (which is still an uninvited & unwanted guest) for me to be in any kind of shape to even contemplate attention & surrender. I had moments during in-depth shamanic retreats & firmly gentle yoga mediation practices with very real, very genuinely grounded, deeply intuitive teachers that anchored me in moments of true awareness & opened mind & heart to ways of being that led to truths never experienced before. And eventually my job, my life, the world distracted me away from my learning & I’m grateful, hard to believe, for being physically forced to stop & return to the only things in my life that had really brought me to a sense of being that could help me not drown in self-pitying despair.
The nuances in your descriptions of attention & surrender draw me back to re-read & re-focus (brain fog is not my helpful companion & also can be a slack excuse) & i am far from any of this flowing naturally & easily. Yet there is already a change without conscious focus at times that sneaks up on me & gracefully surprises me where both attention & surrender are concerned & i am enveloped in an awareness that’s alien & familiar simultaneously.
I have much to learn & probably far to go in embracing a way of being that wasn’t present in most of my life but it is radically better & I’m not drowning in chaos like i was 6 years ago, which helped nothing heal. I may not have attention & surrender down pat but i have peace & hope replacing the tunnel vision of chaos & despair that had become a daily routine.
There is no limit to the gratitude of how these roadmaps of wisdom gems have altered me & consequently resurrected the laugh & the hope that had vanished. A free life saving gift (coffee doesn’t count) i never counted on & will continue to unwrap as i learn more. I am so grateful for what you wrote, so simple but often not so easy. Well worth it.
Mahalo mahalo mahalo 🪷🌼🌺