“One of the spiritual practices which spiritual teachers teach over and over and over again is attention. It’s the ability to just say no to all interior self-preoccupation and commentary, which is pulling you out of the moment.” Cynthia Bourgeault

The Sacred Nature of Attention

“I think you could say that attention is to the Gurdjieff Work what the Eucharist is to Christianity. It’s the holy, sacred, life-giving substance.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Living Presence, 4:10 Chapter-7-Voluntary-Attention

“This process of changing the focus of attention is a long one. I would say in general that every particular spiritual path has its secret ingredient. The thing that it works with more than everything, the Buddhists with their compassion. In the Gurdjieff’s work, it’s attention. It’s all about attention. The deeper conscious ability to harness the energy of attention for transformation individually and collectively.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2016 Three-Centered Knowing, 22:21 06-Tuesday Evening Reflection.

“The training of the attention is a necessary part of our spiritual training. It is an essential factor in the mind spiritualizing itself, in the development of the soul. Eventually, under the power of the soul, attention may become luminous and creative. As we consciously give our attention to others—to creative acts and to service—we are also giving of our soul, and this is how the soul grows.” Kabir Helminski, Living Presence, p50.

The Essential Spiritual Capacity

“Your capacity for directed attention is a marvelous gift, and you’re not going to go anywhere on the spiritual path without it.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Silence as Presence Feb 2025, 21:00 09 Silence Tues am teaching.

“One of the spiritual practices which spiritual teachers teach over and over and over again is attention. It’s the ability to just say no to all interior self-preoccupation and commentary, which is pulling you out of the moment, and to put yourself fully in the moment and be here. So, the capacity to pay attention. And most of us, particularly in the Christian North American West, it’s the same thing with paying attention as it is with breathing. It’s too shallow. We don’t pay attention deep enough. We don’t know how to pay attention with our whole body, with our whole being.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Awakened Mind Awakened Heart, 2:54 Disc 1 Track 4.

“Concentration, as the faculty of fixing maximum attention on a minimum amount of space … is the practical key to all success in every domain.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p8

The Nature and Function of Attention

“We typically, and normally, and almost universally think of attention as an energy of connectivity. Attention typically exists in this form, connecting subject to object. However, there is a different configuration of attention. It can also exist in a different way as a kind of energy pocket, a vibrational field with its own tensile strength.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Heart of Centering Prayer, 36:29 The Heart of Centering Prayer Part 1 of 4

“Attention can’t be divided. It is whole. It can only be expanded” Cynthia Bourgeault, The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

“Out of the subject-object mode, attention magically turns into awareness” Cynthia Bourgeault, The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

“What you pay attention to you energize” Cynthia Bourgeault, The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

Attention and Consciousness

“Self-observation is never mechanical—that is, a man or a woman cannot observe themselves mechanically. It requires directed attention to observe oneself and attention requires consciousness, or rather, the act of attention puts us at once into more conscious parts of centers. It is the same with Self-Remembering. No one can remember himself mechanically. Full Self-Remembering requires full consciousness.” Maurice p1042?

“To get into higher—that is, more conscious—parts of centers, the act of attention is necessary. And bear in mind that the Work teaches, as a practical thing, that by means of directed attention we can change our inner position.” p181-182

“The true self cannot be attained with the attention in subject-object mode. You can only find your true self in a place beyond the mind” Cynthia Bourgeault, The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

The Center of Attention

“Where do you pay attention from? If there is a very, very strong collected center from which attention is in yourself, in a recollection as it’s known in the classic language of the Christian East, or vigilance. Nepsis is the actual word in Greek. It’s that inner reservoir of collected attention from that deep kind of laser-like point of I am here. You can then extend the power of your attention out and it will describe a circle and everything that falls within that circle is part of the field. And so you don’t have to chop it up and say, well this part goes to my feet and this part goes to my breathing and this part… It comes together in a single moment like a chord through the power of the center.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2016 Three-Centered Knowing, 44:23 08-Wednesday Morning Teaching.

“Centering prayer is all about the configuration of your attention” Cynthia Bourgeault, The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

Attention in Practice

“There’s a direct parallel between what Gebser is saying about time and what Gurdjieff is saying about attention. This whole idea of working with attention, it becomes almost the sacred element in the Gurdjieff work, as we learn to bring attention to the three centers, to receive impressions consciously, which is what we’re working with in the clear impressions exercise, by distracting and diverting the energy away from this endless meandering of the mental system into something else. And what the work adds is the deep idea that sensation is the key to the whole thing.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Integral Light Dec 2021, 30:25 4.1 Intentional Suffering as Cosmogonic Agency.

“Far from imposing itself through force, authentic spiritual experience sometimes requires very awake and very concentrated attention so as not to let it pass by unnoticed. It is often difficult to even notice it, without speaking of being seized or bowled over by it. If this were not so, what good would exercises of concentration and profound meditation be? For all the exercises that all serious esotericism prescribes are necessary in order to render attention so awake and intense that it is in a position to perceive within the calm and silent domain of the depth of the soul where spiritual truth reveals itself.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p644

“It’s a perfectly good kind of attention to wave goodbye to yourself as you go over the waterfall because that naked seeing is all part of it too.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Living Presence, 26:44 Chapter-7-Voluntary-Attention.

Attention as Creative Force

“The great ordering and creating principle you have inside you is your attention. And as you follow it, you have this incredible capacity to bring into a relational field things that are presently isolated and disconnected. To find a way to pull meaning, and in the process of that, to come to a place of equanimity where you don’t need to harden and close down your heart in order to protect yourself from the wounding that you feel would be overwhelming. Because the protection actually comes from the faith, hope, and love. These cardinal virtues are not going to let you be squashed if you know how to engage them.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 51:00 11 Tuesday am Teaching.

“Giving and receiving both work as part of the reciprocity once you get into thinking of attention not not just as an energy per se but as a conductive field in which connection is made. A conductor—attention as a kind of conductor between the realms.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Stonington 2022 2nd Body, 52:30 Eastertide Challenge with Cynthia Bourgeault – Q & A part 2.

Attention in Balance

“Attention and surrender need to be in balance. They are the joysticks you use to navigate the cosmos.” Cynthia Bourgeault,
The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

“Attention is not only meditating, it is transmitting. Giving and receiving, God speaks to man. Receiving and giving, man speaks to God. Midway between micro and macro cosmos, man has his part to play. Returning to the body is a gesture of opening to the attention which, beckoned, is ready to serve its cosmological function. In other words, what if the universe is structurally, inherently coherent and compassionate? And as we can bring our attention into alignment with that and participate in that two-way street, we receive the continuous gift of our real identity.

“And we give back understanding inescapable what our post must be in any given moment to be in harmony, to be a part of that whole arc of compassion. We just see it. And so you take the post, not out of the urgency or the self-righteousness or the judgment or the moral one-upsmanship that dominates so much social action at the lower level, but out of the deep sense of the dignity and the solidarity of the whole collective face of humanity.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2016 Three-Centered Knowing, 51:21 21-Friday Morning Teaching.

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Logion 5
Yeshua said:
Recognize what is in front of you,
and what is hidden from you will be revealed.
For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.
(Leloup)

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Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise. 

Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985

Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Thomas, Inner Traditions, 2005

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas