Simone Weil:
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.
It presupposes faith and love.”
🔎 Weil reminds us that attention is not mere awareness but consecration — a gaze that redeems whatever it beholds.
Søren Kierkegaard:
“Purity of heart is to will one thing.”
🔎 Kierkegaard summons the mind to singularity — to choose what is worthy and discard the rest.
Turning of the Mind
Metanoia begins where noise ends — in the silence before recognition. Born from the Greek for “turning of the mind,” it means not theatrical repentance but quiet reorientation: the soul’s compass finding north again.
Such turning demands valor. The modern mind drifts at the mercy of its machinery — thoughts rented by algorithms, emotions auctioned to commerce. To turn inward now is no retreat; it is reclamation.
Metanoia proposes a richer economy: one measured not by reaction but by reflection, not by accumulation but by discernment. It is a moral transaction in which the self buys back its own awareness.
The Currency of Attention
Weil’s clarity cuts through the modern haze. To attend is to sanctify; to neglect is to condemn. Attention confers value upon whatever it touches.
Yet in the global bazaar, attention has become the most coveted currency. Corporations compete for fragments of our gaze, trading them like futures on an invisible exchange. The sacred becomes transactional. Prayer becomes performance. Stillness becomes scarcity.
We scroll to escape silence, not to seek truth. We chase momentum and mistake it for meaning. In such a world, stillness itself becomes an act of rebellion — the quiet uprising of an undivided soul.
♾️ Questions of Value — The Threshold
Before we can reclaim attention, we must question what we truly attend to.
What happens to truth when distraction becomes our daily trade?
If every glance carries a price, what remains free in the human spirit?
Can discernment endure in economies built on persuasion?
What moral cost do we pay when our gaze becomes a commodity?
When everything demands our notice, what still deserves devotion?
Is silence the last sanctuary left to conscience?
The Practice of Presence
To restore attention is not a technical project; it is spiritual repair. Each act of focus becomes fidelity renewed — a refusal to fragment, a stand against dispersion.
True attention requires courage: to linger where others scroll, to trust that depth still matters, to risk boredom in pursuit of beauty.
Turning inward, we rediscover the slow pulse of being. That turning — the act of return — is Metanoia itself: the mind realigned, the spirit recalibrated. Presence becomes resistance; awareness, a quiet art.
🪞 The Rhetorical Mirror
Headspace once launched a campaign inviting users to Find Calm — Subscribe Now.
The irony was immaculate: serenity sold by subscription.
This is the Appeal to Emotion fallacy — persuasion built on longing rather than logic. It exploits our ache for peace by framing it as a purchase. The language of transcendence becomes the grammar of consumption.
Such rhetoric is not neutral; it reshapes desire itself. It teaches us to confuse the stillness of being with the relief of buying, and to measure mindfulness by monthly renewal fees.
To see through such persuasion is to reclaim moral sight. The fallacy, once named, loses its charm.
Clarity is the first act of freedom.
🔎 Advertising does not steal serenity; it distracts us from remembering we already possess it.
♾️ Questions of Value — The Rhetorical Mirror
Have we confused consumption with fulfillment?
Can mindfulness coexist with monetization?
What becomes of wisdom when it is packaged and priced?
Is self-awareness still possible in a culture addicted to self-promotion?
🔎 True mindfulness cannot be bought, for the very act of buying breaks the stillness it seeks to sell.
🪶 The Garden of Glass
I wander through the garden of glass and glow,
Where thoughts move quick but rarely grow.
The world hums bright with a thousand eyes,
Each watching, selling, beneath disguise.
My mind once calm, now split in two —
Half for the world, half lost from view.
I scroll through silence, skip through pain,
Mistaking movement for refrain.
Yet in the hush that screens forget,
Where breath meets thought, I’m human yet.
For there within the still, unseen,
Lies all I am — and all I mean.
—R.M. Sydnor
🏛️ Wisdom’s Lens
Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
🔎 The mind gives most deeply when it beholds without demand.
🌅 Closing Meditation
Guard your gaze; it is the gate to your becoming.
🔎 What you behold too long becomes the mirror of your soul.
🙏🏾 Affirmation
I must steady my mind against the undertow of distraction.
I must choose depth over drift, devotion over display.
I must attend to what is real and relinquish what is noise.
My attention is not for sale — it is sacred.
📚 Enrichment — Further Reading, Viewing, and Listening on The Currency of Attention
📚 Books
Gravity and Grace — Simone Weil — on the sanctity of attention and moral clarity.
The World Beyond Your Head — Matthew B. Crawford — reclaiming focus in a distracted age.
The Shallows — Nicholas Carr — how the Internet reshapes thought and erodes reflection.
How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell — reclaiming stillness as resistance.
📰 Articles
“The Attention Economy and the Human Cost of Clicks” — The Atlantic — how markets monetize awareness.
“Mindfulness, Monetized” — The Guardian — the commercialization of calm.
🎞️ Films
The Social Dilemma — directed by Jeff Orlowski — technology’s quiet capture of consciousness.
Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things — directed by Matt D’Avella — simplicity as liberation from noise.
📺 Television
Black Mirror — anthology series — reflections of our distracted selves.
Severance — Apple TV+ — the divided self in the age of productivity.
🪶 Poetry
T.S. Eliot — “Burnt Norton” — the still point where attention meets eternity.
Mary Oliver — “Mindful” — a hymn to noticing as devotion.
RMS INSIGHTS ✍🏾 