The Three Energies of Attention (And Why Only One Sets You Free)

Why Being “In the Zone” Isn’t the Same as Being Awake

Oct 23, 2025

When I started Cynthia Bourgeault’s Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within, I thought I was signing up for serenity. Maybe I’d learn a better meditation method, or some new contemplative trick for turning worry into peace. Instead, Cynthia handed me a scalpel and told me to start cutting away everything that wasn’t true.

And for the record, when she says Mind of Christ, she isn’t talking about theology or belief. She means a consciousness that’s clear, spacious, and infused with love—the same awareness mystics in every tradition have described. It’s not something to believe in; it’s something to wake up as.

She doesn’t promise happiness. She promises wholeness. And that’s an entirely different game.

The Sleepwalker’s Fuel: Automatic Energy

Most of us are spiritual Roombas—bumping into the furniture of our own conditioning, apologizing to the coffee table, and calling it a day. This is automatic energy. It keeps the body alive, the bills paid, and the anxiety gently simmering at a low boil. It’s muscle memory for the soul.

You don’t live your life so much as it lives you. Ninety percent of your day is powered by a ghost in your nervous system. The brain hums, the thumbs scroll, and your mouth says “sorry” before your awareness clocks in for the shift.

Presence begins the first time you catch yourself mid-habit and, instead of judging, you just see. That microscopic moment of awareness is like finding a candle in a blackout. Don’t wave it around trying to light the whole world—just notice it’s there.

The Seeker’s Drug: Sensitive Energy

Sensitive energy is where things start to feel holy. It’s that state where you’re completely absorbed—lost in a song, a sermon, or someone’s eyes at 2 a.m. It feels divine because your whole being is vibrating in one direction. But careful—intensity isn’t the same as consciousness.

When you’re in sensitive energy, your attention is glued to the object of your fascination. You’ve merged, but you’ve also vanished. You’re not awake; you’re just beautifully possessed.

Most spiritual junkies stop here. They confuse the rush for the revelation. They chase the next retreat, the next guru high, the next cosmic dopamine drip. They want to feel spiritual, not be free. Sensitive energy is the soul’s Red Bull—gives you wings, then leaves you twitchy.

The Liberating Force: Conscious Energy

Then there’s conscious energy. This is the power grid of real presence, the voltage that lights up awareness itself. Not trance. Not passion. Spacious attention.

In conscious energy, you can see the whole field: the breath, the thought, the ache, the beauty, and the awareness holding them all. You’re not drowning in the experience; you’re surfing it. You’re both the watcher and the watched.

This is what Cynthia calls “the Mind of Christ,” not a theological brain implant, but a frequency where love and lucidity coexist. Joy without denial. Sorrow without collapse. You stop chasing light and realize you are the lamp.

The Seduction of Intensity

Intensity is seductive because it feels like awakening. The heart races, the tears flow, the playlist slaps—and for a moment you’re sure the veil just dropped. But it didn’t. You just swapped one obsession for another.

Sensitive energy is the affair that makes you sing; conscious energy is the marriage that teaches you how to stay. Presence doesn’t need fireworks. It’s the quiet fidelity of showing up when the moment has bad breath.

If you can hold awareness when nothing spectacular is happening, congratulations—you’ve passed your first real initiation.

Practicing the Mind of Christ

“Practicing living presence” isn’t just poetic branding. It’s literal. You practice. Every day. It’s not automatic and it’s not gifted. It’s a willed skill, a moment-by-moment choice to wake the hell up.

And before anyone panics at the phrase Mind of Christ, breathe. Cynthia isn’t talking about dogma or doctrine. She’s talking about consciousness. The same luminous awareness that mystics across every tradition point to. The Buddhists call it Rigpa. The Sufis call it Presence. Cynthia just speaks from her lineage.

You can’t download it. You can’t fake it. You generate it like friction heat, attention rubbing against awareness until it catches fire. Every instant gives you the same three doors: fall asleep in reaction, drown in intensity, or wake up in presence. Only one leads out of the house of mirrors.

Practice: Catching Yourself in the Act

You can’t think your way into consciousness. You have to see your way there.

Pick any ordinary activity—brushing your teeth, driving, scrolling your phone—and slow it down by two degrees. Don’t make it holy. Just make it visible.

Watch the body move before the mind catches up. That’s automatic energy.
Feel the moment you get caught up in the rhythm, the music, or the satisfaction of doing it well. That’s sensitive energy.
Then step back half an inch inside yourself. Notice both the doing and the one who’s noticing. That’s conscious energy.

You’ll lose it a hundred times. That doesn’t matter. Every time you remember, you’ve already returned. That flicker of awareness is the work.

Closing Blessing

The mystic isn’t the one who feels more. The mystic is the one who sees more. Intensity burns hot and fast; awareness glows steady and clean.

Blessed be the ones who stop chasing the zone and start living awake.
Blessed be the ones who can hold still while God changes the light bulb.
Blessed be the ones who see the divine not in the fireworks, but in the afterglow.

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