NOTES ON THE NEXT ATTENTION

New York: Indications Press, 2010. New cloth bound in dust jacket.. Cloth bound in dust jacket with marking ribbon and color frontis photograph of Michel de Salzmann; 376 pages. "Everything we need is here in us. Everything for fuller being. There is a kind of sacred descent of attention that can bring this about. Seeing the obstacles, thoughts, feelings, yes, perhaps a pressure that keeps me from it. But if I can relax inside, just allow the pure attention to flow in, be in that. Very natural. It's what we are.

"Attention: a sacred energy coming into me. Be sensitive to it. Recognize again and again that it is there."

-- Michel de Salzmann

For many summers in the Swiss alpine village of Chandolin, Dr. Michel de Salzmann met with people interested in the Gurdjieff Work, a teaching for awakening in the midst of everyday life. Evident even in these recollected fragments of his talks (1993-2000) is Dr. de Salzmann's unique ability to speak in a way that opens the listener to "the inexhaustible dimension of attention."

To help one understand what it means to wake up, Dr. de Salzmann draws a distinction between something one does with one's attention and something one receives. He speaks of a subtle energy that is both sacred and accessible. In the moment one recognizes this energy and consciously receives this finer attention, one awakens and begins to be.

"We are in a process to come under another influence," he tells us. "There is ‘my' attention, secondary attention, that runs up the mountain, sees obstacles, does this or that....

"If it is ‘my' attention, it is not this other Attention, which transforms."

In these notes his voice calls us to this next Attention.