The Monks of medieval times spent many hours copying manuscripts. This was their Work. But it was also excellent training. They were developing the ability to focus their attention. If you doubt that, select just one page from the Book of Kells and try to copy it. You can easily lose your way within the knotted borders along the edge. This skill of focusing your attention is not easily developed.

You are at a dinner party, and your host begins to talk about the weather. Within a few moments, he is telling you about his mother-in-law and soon, the topic has changed to chicken on the table. That is called "light conversation." It leads no place and it certainly contains very little "light." In its place, it is fine and it serves a purpose, for it allows those around the table to become comfortable and at ease. Yet it is a perfect place to practice the development of attention.

Try to carry on a conversation with a friend and stick to one subject for at least five minutes and you will see that it is not easy to do (unless of course you are aught-up in speaking about yourself and your problems). Engage in a conversation about the latest news of the world or even the weather. Try to achieve a ten minute attentiveness. That certainly is not a long time, but it is very difficult to accomplish, at first.

One of the best exercises I know, for developing concentration was suggested by Rudolph Steiner, founder of the Waldorf schools. It is called the pencil exercise.

Identify something from your everyday life, such as a pencil. Give it your undivided attention for five minutes. Think about its manufacture and its uses. Think about where the materials from which it was made came from. Continue to concentrate on the same object for five minutes a day for several days and when you have learned all you can from it, then start with another. Continue the practice for one month. You will begin to develop your attention span, and you will also begin to learn a great deal about each object and how much information you have stored in your inner world concerning it.

Another way to appreciate what is asked of you in this process of developing the attention, is to consider something that you are pretty good at doing. If, for example, you are pretty good at tennis, then it follows that you have given your attention to tennis sometime in your life. You have learned a good backstroke. You have learned to put a little "English" on the ball when you serve and such attention has resulted in your ability to be a pretty good tennis player.

Two things have gone hand in hand; you were interested in elevating your tennis game, that's the intention part or the motive part, and then you gave it your attention (probably for more than five minutes, a few days in a row).

These same two things are at work now. You are interested in Contemplative Prayer. You are reading this because of that interest, and you are being asked to develop your attention span as the first step toward your goal. You are not being asked to give your attention to Contemplative Prayer: however, you are being asked to give your attention to your work, or to your tennis game or whatever your interests may be, or even simply to examine a pencil carefully for a few minutes over a few days.

This then is the beginning of building the "muscles" necessary to sustain your prayers long enough to enter into a deeper spiritual awareness and access the inner rooms.

There is a famous story of a young student who wanted to study with Professor Agassiz, one of the world's great naturalists. Agassiz met the student and presented him with a fish, a pencil and a piece of paper and asked him to write down everything he could observe about the fish; and left. The youth was finished in a few minutes and waited for the professor to return.

He waited for an hour and then two hours and in the process he became very irritated. He thought of just leaving the place but then Agassiz would no have accepted him as a student... so he began to look at the fish again, and after a few minutes he had written several things on paper that he had not seen before.

When the teacher finally did return, after being away for the entire day, he looked at the work and asked his student to come again the next day and continue the assignment!

The young man observed that fish for three days and learned two things: The first was how much he did not know about the fish and the second was the value of giving his full attention to the problem at hand. During the time that he was studying with him, Agassiz told him, "A pencil is the best of eyes."

If you are determined to learn about fish, that is a good way to proceed. If you are determined to learn about the higher nature within us, about prayer that transcends our normal ability, about how to communicate with your own spiritual helpers, then you must learn to "attend to the voice of wisdom." And by so doing you will begin to develop insight.

Once you can sustain your attention, confusion is thwarted. Once you can no longer be easily confused, then it is possible to pass through the First Room as we mentioned in our previous chapter, and experience the fact that in God there is no confusion at all.

To begin, start each day with a short resolve. You may wish to compose one of your own or to use the one on the following page, The important thing is to try to do this each day, preferably on arising.
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