A Matter of Attention - Annette Nibley

Read more from Annette at What Never Changes

Turn your attention away from the dream right now. Just for right now, you don’t need it. Let the thoughts and worries of the dream character continue as they will, but just step back for a moment and watch it happen, watch the dream character involved in its dream.

And while the dream character is going about its business, turn your attention to the one thing right now that is shining and clear, peaceful and unassuming, steady and solid: the consciousness with which the dream character is being observed.

Just rest here, in the unchanging consciousness which reflects but is not changed by what it reflects. This is reality. Nothing else is.

Rest your attention here. Get to know it. Let the reality of consciousness be known to you, as you. Nothing needs to be done here. No thought affects it, and so thought is not needed. No action affects it, and so action is not needed.

It’s not possible to do anything with this consciousness because this consciousness is everything already. Pay attention to it for a moment right now and it is easily noticed that consciousness is complete. And since consciousness is complete, you are complete. The only thing that ever makes you feel like you are not complete, not whole, and that you need to “return” somewhere to find wholeness, is that you have put your attention into the dream life, and forgotten that wholeness is all that you really are.

So observe the dream character as it desires enlightenment, and as it desires love, reassurance, respect. Watch the dream character as its life plays out. It is not who you are. You are this consciousness, which has no mortality, no vulnerability, and no limits. Beyond all imagination, the nothingness within which resides the seed of all existence, the shining creation of infinite universes – this is you.

Put your attention here, and allow your sense of this to grow. If you are looking for Wholeness, here it is. If you are looking for True Love, here it is, in the One Unlimited Self that is Reality. No other love is possible. And this Love is already here, as You. It’s only a matter of attention.