RECLAIMING YOUR ATTENTION: Where FORMATION BEGINS

Season One | Post 4

There’s something sacred about your attention.

It’s more than focus. More than productivity. Your attention is what shapes your desires, your perceptions, your prayers. It’s the front door to your formation.

And in a world designed to distract it, reclaiming your attention isn’t just helpful.

It’s holy work.

The Most Spiritual Battle of Our Age

We often think spiritual formation happens through dramatic awakenings or mountaintop revelations. But the real work? It starts much smaller.

It begins with what we pay attention to.

• Because what you pay attention to…shapes what you believe.

• What you believe…shapes what you value.

• And what you value…shapes who you become.

That means your attention is never neutral. It’s always forming you—either toward love, or away from it.

And today, most of us are giving it away without even realizing it.

The Systems Shaping You

The digital world is not just full of distractions—it is actively discipling us.

Algorithms feed us what keeps us scrolling. Emotional content hooks our nervous system. Endless notifications pull us back, again and again.

These aren’t just annoyances. They’re formation tools. They are shaping what we think about, how we react, and even who we believe we are.

But here’s the deeper truth: even in the middle of that chaos, you still have agency. You still have the opportunity to listen to the Spirit. And those two working together - agency & Spirit? That’s fuel for formation.

What Agency Actually Is

Agency isn’t just the power to make a decision. It’s the grace-infused capacity to respond—not just react—to what’s forming us.

It’s recognizing that, though you’re shaped by culture, biology, trauma, and algorithms… you are not powerless, even if it sometimes feels that way. Trauma can disrupt our sense of agency—but it doesn’t erase it. With gentleness, over time, you can reconnect with the part of you that can choose, even in small ways.

In spiritual terms, agency is your ability to say yes to the Spirit’s slow, loving work in you. It’s your ability to choose—over and over again—to turn your attention toward what is true, good, and beautiful.

Not because you’re trying to fix yourself. But because you’ve started to believe that God might actually be forming something new in you.

The Role of Spiritual Practices

This is where spiritual disciplines come in—not as self-improvement hacks, but as sacred habits of re-alignment.

In earlier eras, people fasted to become aware of their cravings.

They practiced silence to hear the still, small voice of God.

They prayed not to escape the world, but to remain rooted in divine love while living in it.

In our time, perhaps one of the most urgent disciplines is what I’ve come to think of as attentional stewardship.

A phrase that emerged from a recent collaboration with AI, “attentional stewardship” has become a helpful frame for me. It names something I’ve long felt but hadn’t quite articulated: that how we direct our attention is both deeply human and profoundly spiritual.

What are you giving your mind to?

What’s shaping your nervous system, your imagination, your emotional reflexes?

Noticing this is the beginning of agency.

Responding to it—intentionally—is a spiritual act.

Attention, Neuroplasticity, and Grace

The fact that neuroscience now confirms what spiritual teachers have long known: what you repeat, you become is hopeful. But it’s also hard.

Because choosing to shift your attention—especially when the old loops feel easy or familiar—requires effort. It can feel awkward. Frustrating. Even pointless, at first.

But effort isn’t failure. It’s a part of formation. However, the kind of effort we’re talking about here is gentle. It looks like noticing. Turning toward love in small, doable ways. It’s what happens when you show up, again and again, not alone—but in partnership with grace.

It doesn’t need to be big to begin to heal you.

A Sacred Partnership

Here’s the part most modern self-help advice forgets:

You are not transforming yourself alone.

I believe the Spirit of God is already at work within you—gently, persistently, shaping you toward love. Your job isn’t to force change. It’s to make space for it.

To turn your attention, day by day, toward what is true and good and beautiful. To train your awareness so that it’s open, not reactive. To show up, even when you feel numb or distracted or cynical.

If you’ve experienced trauma, your attention may not always feel like it’s yours to give. That’s not a flaw—it’s your nervous system trying to protect you. This work isn’t about control. It’s about reconnecting, slowly and kindly, with the sacred capacity to choose where you place your gaze.

Transformation isn’t magic. But it is mysterious.

And it happens, most often, in the midst of small, sacred repetitions.

Start Here: Train the Mind

That’s why this site includes a growing collection of Train the Mind exercises.

They’re not complicated. They’re not even long.

They’re designed to be short, daily re-alignments—quiet disruptions that slowly rewire your attention back toward what matters.

One of them is called Find the Good.

It asks you to pause each day and notice the good that was there.

It's not asking you to ignore suffering. But to refuse to let cynicism have the final word.

When practiced daily, this simple act begins to shift the default patterns in your brain.

Not just biologically, but spiritually.

You begin to notice where God's goodness is alive and present in this reality.

The Invitation

So here’s the invitation:

Begin to notice where your attention is going.

And ask: is this forming me into someone who is wise, generous, and loves well?

We don’t need to fix everything.

We don’t need to get it right every time.

We just need to begin—gently, prayerfully—with one act of attention.

And I really believe this: You’re not doing this alone.

The Spirit is already moving, reshaping, renewing.

All you have to do is join the process.

Coming Next

Of course, holding that attention—especially over time—isn’t easy.

Your brain will resist. Your devices will interrupt. The world will pull you back into the spiral.

But sustained focus is possible.

In Post 5, we’ll explore the neurobiology of attention span, and how ancient spiritual practices can help us strengthen our ability to stay with what matters—long enough for formation and even transformation to take root.

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