Your attention is a powerful force of Nature.
What you give your attention to feeds on the energy given to it by your attention.
Do you carefully give your attention to the things in your life? Or is your attention taken from you like a lost child wandering aimlessly in a busy crowd? Rarely an adult holds the hand of this child to guide the child home. Not only that, each time an adult grasps the child's hand, interest is soon lost and thus the child ends up more and more lost and displaced each time as the temporary helpers disappear back into the crowd.
Give your careful attention to creating a fire to warm your hands. If you are careful enough, the tiny flame slowly grows and grows by nurturing it with your attention. Eventually, it is a large fire warming everyone through a cold night, boiling water for soothing tea and cooking food to nourish the body.
One day the child needs to grow up and take responsibility; We must each take responsibility of how we direct our attention and thus what we achieve with our efforts and what we spend our Life-energy on. The child wandering in the crowd once mature enough will realise that even though it did not ask to be lost, although it may not be fair or pleasant, one needs to take responsibility for their own path. It would not have know this without being lost in the first place.
Like the the rays of the sun concentrated on a point sparks a fire, your attention can harness the power of a star. That star is YOU. When the light is dim you are lost in a crowd; when the sun is shining you can create a fire that warms not only your entire being but also enriches the lives of others and radiates outward into the world but only because it is a fire that is being nurtured within.
When we practice Qigong, we learn how to direct our attention to the body. In our daily life we are caught in thinking about things and problems and the body is forgotten. When the fire of your attention is directed to the outside world at the expense of the inner world the body suffers. Yes, we may erect tall buildings and construct technological wonders but if directing our attention to the outside world results in that, what will be the result if we direct this attention inward with the same intensity and attentiveness? We all have the same spark within us, you be the judge!
