Merciful Attention
Spatial Attention (3DSA) focuses the attention on the inner space + contours of something or someone. This immersion of our attention creates emotional feelings of sympathy.
Appreciative Attention (3DAA) focuses the attention on the contours + the immediate outer space of something or someone. This creates feelings of compassion & empathy.
Applying (3DSA) plus (3DAA) creates Merciful Attention: Sharing in someone’s suffering as if it were your own and then shifting your attention to the other’s outer space. This combo of emotional attention involves the limbic (mammalian) brain part mostly. The attention-giver starts to regulate and heal the receiver’s brain network. Both brains work together.
The word mercy literally means “sorrowful at heart”. Merciful Attention (“I care”) removes not only resistance and suffering but also revitalizes both the giver and the receiver.
This limbic love resonance turns into limbic love regulation, causing both neural networks to rewire themselves. This leads to limbic revision, the changing of the brain’s wiring. This merciful attention can be done non-local.
Merciful attention creates
an ever-growing space
inside the one being focused on!
Since our inner space (made up of atoms) is about 4% matter and 96% space, space or no-thingness is thus the key word in both the inner and the outer world!
Brain scans show the marked difference in brain functioning and overall activity (gamma waves) that occurs when people are thinking and feeling appreciation versus the opposite. The scans are viewed from the neck up.
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Brain on Negative |
Brain on Appreciative Thoughts and Feelings |
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Front
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