The cultivation of focus and peace

I'm interested in the sporting world phenomenon, "the quiet eye". It's the state that in some ways resembles rest but is in fact absolute focus — single, undiluted concentration.

It's a theological phenomenon too. You'll probably know the verse from the book of the Revelation, in which Jesus is said to address the church at Ephesus thus: "I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love."

The first love is, I think, something akin to the quiet eye. At Ephesus they're doing a lot of good work but they have taken their eye off the ball.

The practice of minimalism for spiritual purposes is for the cultivation of effective focus and peace — the quiet eye, the first love.

It has a number of components, whether skill sets or information sets or simply habits. There's a dietary aspect. There's the practice of household maintenance. There's the management of our schedule and relationships, and also of our time and our money. When it's correctly done, everything flows toward the same end, becomes contributory to the quiet eye, the first love.

When I closed my Facebook account, "pokes" had gone somewhat out of fashion but, in Facebook's earlier days, when I first had an account, "pokes" were all the thing — most days someone would "poke" you. Many people found it, as I did, irritating.

I've found that in daily (offline) life, there are also things that poke you. 

A diet based on the wrong foods leaves you no peace, your teeth get bored, you get hangry, you have cravings and fling between peaks and troughs. Eating correctly creates steadiness and calms the nervous system, gives you stability and tenacity and alertness and physical peace. 

Clutter and dirt and disorganisation poke you — the dust gets in your airways, the micro-organisms (as well as the larger ones like rats and insects) challenge your immune system and engage your energies. You lose things and have to hunt for them, trip over things, can't find anywhere to rest. Your gaze settles only on chaos.

Too much social involvement pokes you — the factions and feuds, the gossip and people's numerous issues. They unsettle and distract.

Too many duties and too crammed a schedule poke you incessantly, as you juggle and inadvertently drop responsibilities and commitments and flog your exhausted mind to turn from one event to the next and the next and the next, as they come at you like waves crashing onto the shingle as the tide rolls in.

I don't know if you read my post called Resistment a couple of days ago – about buying dresses — but I'm almighty glad I did resist them and that the two I succumbed to purchasing were startlingly cheap. Because when I wore one of these dresses on my regular visit to my mother, she looked up at me in astonished bewilderment as I came through her door, asking me in wonder, "Pen . . . why are you wearing a dressing gown?" Yes.

From that moment onwards I knew every time I wore one of those dresses there'd be an inner tugging of the sleeve, a whispering in my soul's ear, an incessant stream of pokes: "Does this look like a dressing gown to you? . . . Or to you? . . . Or to you?"

And right there what seemed like a treasure becomes a burden best left behind. Move it on. It undermines the quiet eye.

When I'm doing anything I want to be able to focus on that completely. I get thrown off if I have tight shoes that hurt my feet, or the kind of fringe that gets in my eyes, or the kind of bag that always slips off your shoulder, or the kind of dress that climbs up your tights as you walk down the street — or if I'm wearing a garment that people looking at me mistake for a dressing gown. Has to go.

Cultivating the level of focus to avoid distraction, rather than going back to eliminate it after the problem has occurred, is no doubt the next step. Though, in the realm of clothing, there's an issue I have never managed to resolve: for me, the ideal daily garments would be like the robes of a monk/nun, enveloping, simple, androgynous; yet the reality is these attract attention and comment and misinterpretation, they are eye-catching and invite comment, and so surrender the peace they promised, to distraction. The unobtrusive continues to be the better choice.