Our attention is much more than we generally think. It is much more than a simple mental or cerebral mechanism. It concerns our whole being. If its potentialities are far from being fully actualized in our usual life, maybe it is precisely because it is not recognized as a multidimensional keyboard and as the unifying principle of our being.
Paradoxically this basic act of knowing, which is attention, is only actualized when we don’t know -- that is, when there is a question. Its level and, so to say, its degree of “totalization” are proportional to our questioning. You have surely noticed that when a question is vital -- when it takes us in the guts, as you say -- it suspends all unnecessary movements, emotional and physical as well as mental. It clears the way for real awareness and sensitivity, which are components of my total power of attention. It is only between my not knowing and my urge to know that I find myself present, mobilized, open, new -- that is to say, attentive.
Attention in its active form is therefore inseparable from interrogation; it is essentially, in its purity, an act of questioning.
Attention Is Inseparable From Interrogation — by Michel de Salzmann
http://www.awakin.org/read/audio.php?op=play&tid=2329
