May I Have Your Attention, Please?

“Will the real Slim Shady Jack Comer please stand up, I repeat, will the real Jack Comer please stand up? We're gonna have a problem here?”

The 3 quarter length shorts short wanderer

Ironic don’t you think? How I, Jack Comer, haven't stood up and taken control of my life and it has caused me many problems. Thinking to myself “why in the world can’t I just get something right in my life?” If I had to answer that question I would have to say it’s not so much about the action I take to accomplish an aim or complete objectives towards the aims…It’s more about what I am focused on, where I put my ATTENTION. Where should I put my attention? My stillness, both physically and mentally, why? Because that draws out the emotional and spiritual stillness that my conditioning and sporadic reaction to life has tried to run away from, continuously.

The Importance of Being Still

As you can see from the photo above (of pure exploration and wonder) it’s safe to say I haven’t been the calmest of children. Yes, still now in adulthood I suffer from my attention jumping from one thing to another. My lack of ability to get still has limited me in my life but I haven’t realised as much until recently.

My mentor, Paul S. Waugh has been teaching me and my associate partners at Lighthouse Global that stillness is key for creating optimal and maximal lives for ourselves. Because through being still, stopping the cymbal-banging monkey in our heads, we begin to listen to our feelings, to connect with our immense potential and listen to others, helping them feel be understood, creating deep and meaningful relationships. For those who we want to create relationships with, we first need to relate to ourselves.

I have had a difficult time this week feeling the stretch from pillar to post in making decisions. I was making a call to see someone, and through the conversation I turned around and decided to stay where I was for longer. Because I have always wanted to be liked by others, whether that’s friends, family or business partners. I have listened to their opinions and perspectives, followed their actions despite how I feel. It’s time I did take a stand for myself, but I can only do that through stillness, by being as intensely calm, focused and present as I can be, for where I am.

Be Still And Know That I Am God

My mentor Paul has said, and I quote “To be still and know that I’m God, not sing. Not listen to endless sermons, not jump up and down, not write letters, just get still, it’s a command from God. Be still, it's a command, get still, BE still. Can you and will you? Can you and are you? Get still, feel, search, ask, know, learn, discover, plan, then speak.” See the importance of stillness? To know that we can connect with others, to feel them, to understand our fellow human beings, it all comes from stillness, a willing to be still and care, truly care, to seek first to understand the person who we are speaking to. That source of stillness, of peace is God, whether you like the word God or not, He, God, is the creator of everything that we see, and cannot. God means “cause to become”, the more we connect with Him, THE source of all life, the more we are able to be directed by our conscience, guided by love and care for others, not just our selfish selves, which I have had experiences in, more than I would like to mention.

The Importance of Prayer

What do we do when we pray? We connect with God through His son Christ, as I’ve said before, God means a cause to become, which means when we are praying, which is a form of communication, we are praying to the true source of life. I was thinking about this a lot and it’s barbaric to think that we, myself included, that we avoid speaking to the very source of life. Before writing this article I sat in stillness and prayed because I wanted to write an article, to provide a source of learning for others through my experience but had no clue what to write about. Do you see the power of prayer? It’s in every letter you are reading.

What I find so powerful with what I am about to share with you is how powerful prayer can be. How it can help many different people and it has in my life. Praying for my mum when she was diagnosed with cancer, prayer’s really helped her and my family and I go through the pain of her terminal illness, the tumours have stopped growing for the moment. You can call it luck, call it science (don’t get me wrong, I think the oncologists and the marsden are incredible) call it whatever you want to call it. You'd be a fool not to admit that something else had something to do with it, especially at stage 4 inoperable lung cancer.

My mentor Paul shared something with me that is absolutely profound and I wanted to share it with you. He said “You have all this power, and you hardly use it, we hardly use it. Never rely on our own power and a bit of luck. Christ has clearly said use that as much as you can. Communicate to your body, communicate to your mind, communicate to yourself, your intention, what you are changing and want to grow. And make prayer your main way of doing that, the way you communicate that you yourself. The main way you communicate to the world, the main way you communicate to those you love, pray with them.” Being still is so strong, it’s a communication and recognition of the power, of the potential we have inside of us.

Your Attention Is Your Future Self

Jordan Peterson in the video above explains why our attention is a calling from our future selves to focus and concentrate on what is meaningful to us, that if we do remain focused and attentive we can work towards our goals in life. We need to stay focused enough, one thing that Jordan Peterson doesn’t mention in this video is stillness and the power of recognising that it is stillness that can help us pay attention to ourselves and the world, positioning ourselves to be able to face challenges internally and externally.

Conclusion

Prayer is communicating with the very source of power that is way higher than ourselves, so much that I would do a terrible job of explaining it. But first, we must be still, to pay attention to what we can control and change in our lives, to ask questions to Christ and move forward, to orient our lives towards what we want to achieve. If you would like any help or to discuss the article further with me then please email me at Jack.comer@lig.global. I hope this article’s helped you reflect on your lack of stillness and helped you recognise the importance of prayer, stillness and attention, come on, we aren’t all tibetan monks, we are human, human with a purpose, to better our lives, one still moment and prayer at a time.

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