Witnessing: Attention, Intention and Healing

When we think of healing ourselves, the thoughts and focus revolve around me, myself, I-- my needs alone, and what is necessary to become whole.  Antennae should sprout up whenever a concern or effort becomes self-centric, because that type of concentration isn't healing, it's actually antithetical to healing.  That type of focus is small, cramped, without space or breath.  And a healing is not possible when I am living in that compressed space.

\Counter intuitively, holding someone or something fully in your attention is an act of self-healing.  This is so because your energy is in flow, moving from inside to out and back again. It's not a masochistic "you come before me", but more an inclusive acknowledgement that a universal love flows in and outside myself, connecting, interconnecting.  A salve completing the Whole.  In physical terms, this might resemble the infinity symbol, the horizontal figure eight.  In that act of interconnecting, we allow ourselves to let go of ego's narrow agenda and we enter a universal connection.  Because of this unconditional attention to someone else, paid attention becomes a prepayment I benefit from.  This paid attention benefits the environment, myself as well as others.

\ I've written about materiality and energy in space (Place, Space, Materiality and Health), wherein I speak about the influence of energy on space, humans and nature.  We all have felt an environment or space blessed by a smudge stick, prayer or meditation.  And alternately, we have felt the tensio\n in the energy of a space that has had a recent argument or violence in it.  We don't consider the vitality of this energy, how it supports or undermines a flourishing.  Similarly, we don't consider the energy of a full attention on an other or on a space.  Humans are designed to connect.  It is in this connection, these exchanges of energy that create a healing.

How could it be that this simple act of observing another (without an agenda) could be so nourishing to another and oneself?   Giving attention, to be a witness is to be in a relaxed, tension free place in oneself.  Our bodies and more whole self relax into the rightness of the Self in this state.  This unto itself is a healing.  It rights (normalizes) hormonal releases (endocrine system), the neurotransmitters that dictate hormone releases from our central nervous system, it hosts a more relaxed, stress-free environment from which to act from, to Be in.  In this state, one creates a slower, more accepting self environment that impacts relationship.  This type of energy nourishes the atmosphere around it, as mentioned above. One can feel the difference; this ripples out.  And as indicated above, it circles around and cultivates the same within.  Mutuality.  Healing is never singular, but always exponential.

What does intention have to do with an attention that heals?  For many, an intention is a mental formation directed.  An intention might start with an idea, but if it is true, it is surrounded by feeling.  It is something that does not wince at not knowing and uncertainty.  Feeling supports intention in a language with non-words the cognitive self cannot understand.  It is a connection to this type of feeling that allows the Witness to suspend the monkey-mind's goings-on, permitting a deeper attention, which saturates an atmosphere with a more relaxed openness.

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