Absolutely Unmixed Attention
Simone Weil on Attention and Prayer
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.”
“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” (GG 117)1
School Studies and Paying Attention
Simone Weil was a 20th-century mystic, philosopher, activist, and teacher. Although there is so much about this remarkable woman that is worth our consideration, we will narrow our focus on her insights regarding attention and prayer. Consider her observation that concentrating while doing school studies is a way to prepare for contemplation:
“The key to a Christian conception of studies is that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation toward God with all the attention of which the soul is capable. The quality of attention counts very much in the quality of prayer.
Of course, school exercises develop a less elevated part of our attention. Nevertheless, they are completely effective for increasing the power of attention that will be available in the moment of prayer, on the condition that it is executed for this end and this end alone…the formation of the faculty of attention is the true goal and unique interest of all studies.” (AG 21)2
It might seem strange for Weil to claim the true goal of doing one’s school studies is to form the faculty of attention. What about all the information one learns; isn’t that the goal of study? Weil sees more value in the unmitigated desire to understand than in the act of understanding. For example, if someone focuses all their attention with a desire to understand a geometrical problem (Weil’s example), whether they solve the problem or not, they have sharpened their ability to attend to something. Sharpening the faculty of attention will bear fruit when they turn their attention to God in prayer.
“The role of desire in our studies allows them to be preparation for the spiritual life. For desire, oriented toward God, is the only force capable of raising the soul. Or rather, God alone comes to possess and lift the soul, but only desire obliges God to descend.” (AG 25)
When we give all of our attention to something, like a geometrical problem, we suspend all thought, which creates space as we “become available, empty and able to be penetrated by the object” (AG 26). We are probably all familiar with the experience of what it is like to suddenly “see” the solution to a problem. As you stare at a problem, you can’t seem to figure it out, but you’re concentrating with all your attention. Then, in a flash of clarity, you “see” the solution. What did you do to find the solution? You concentrated your attention. In other words, you didn’t so much find the solution as the solution happened to you. All you did was give the problem your unmixed attention.
Attention and Prayer
“Attention is bound up with desire. Not with the will but with desire-or more exactly, consent.”
“Attention alone-that attention which is so full that the ‘I’ disappears-is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call ‘I’ of the light of my attention and turn it on to that which cannot be conceived.”
“The capacity to drive a thought away once and for all is the gateway to eternity. The infinite in an instant.” (GG 118)
When we give our unmixed attention to God in prayer, making ourselves empty and open, we consent to the “object” of our attention. And, according to Weil, our consent obliges God to come to “possess and lift up the soul.” As we have seen with other contemplatives, such as Mechthild and Eckhart, when we are oriented toward God and empty of attachment, the divine presence fills the emptiness.
In this state of contemplation, there is nothing for the intelligence to affirm or deny; it can only consent. Weil uses the example of listening to a beautiful melody (her examples are Bach or Gregorian chant). When one is fully attentive to the melody, there is nothing to affirm or deny since the attention is occupied in its consent to the flow of the music (GG 129).
The Desire for Light Produces Light
“The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.” (GG 129)
For Weil, a sustained desire and attentive look toward the divine opens the path to contemplation. “If there is true desire-if the object of desire is truly light-the desire for light produces light” (AG 22). If we seek, we shall surely find; nonetheless, the change that contemplation brings can take time.
“In the inner life, time takes the place of space. With time we are altered, and, if as we change we keep our gaze directed toward the same thing, in the end illusions are scattered and the real becomes visible.” (GG 120)
Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil (Trans. Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr; Routledge Classics 2002)
Awaiting God, Simone Weil (Trans. Brad Jersak; Intro. Sylvie Weil; Fresh Wind Press 2012)