The two rivers of attention, and how to get from one to the other

Co-create essay #2: What the Two of Pentacles tell us about how to better achieve a flow state for our work

Happy Sunday, Soothers, and welcome to the second essay in my Co-create series. You can read the others so far here:

1. Co-create: A new teaching series on how to reclaim your focus and do meaningful work in the burnout economy

2. What feminine energy has to do with your productivity (aka how to "do nothing" but still get stuff done)

Don’t forget that to celebrate this series, I am offering 20% off paid subscriptions to the Sunday Soother. You get weekly Tarot readings, extra journal prompts and exercises, discounts to my other products, and the joy of supporting a small, one-woman creative business.

A year or two ago, I came across a newsletter that proposed something sort of audacious sounding for our modern age: an experiment with literally only doing… one thing at one time. (I cannot find the newsletter or remember who wrote it despite best efforts, let me know if you know the one I am thinking of!) (UPDATE! Thanks to Ariana, it is Cafe Anne’s newsletter! Here is the link.)

For a few weeks, the author did things like the following:

• When she ate meals, she just… ate the meal. She didn’t read, listen to podcasts, watch TV, check her email. She sat and stared at a wall while she ate.

• When she was on a phone call with somebody, she was just on the call with them, sitting, pouring all her attention and focus into the conversation

• When she wrote, she didn’t flick around on tabs on her browser in between pauses. She just sat with the writing.

• When she walked, she didn’t do anything else but walk. No listening to podcasts, no checking email or posting photos to Instagram.

• When she brushed her teeth, she just… brushed her teeth. No checking Instagram or email.

And so on and so forth.

At first, as you might expect, she talked about how torturous she found this entire experiment, the way her brain screamed at her to multitask, to check her phone, to distract her with literally anything.

But a week or two in, something bizarre and beautiful happened:

She felt the flow.

She talked about how she had a moment just sitting there, eating a meal, and all of a sudden everything seemed both slower and brighter. More detailed and more beautiful. Technicolor, rich. She could notice every single detail of everything around her, hear more adroitly, smell smells she hadn’t noticed. Everything was heightened.

She was in flow, or what I call The River.

This is the very power of attention, of focus, of being with one thing at once. It gets us to the River.

But despite our attention being our most valuable currency, our strongest superpower, our ticket to the River, it’s also the one that we fracture willingly, that we give away to others, day after day after day.

I want you to think of your attention as a stream of water. The water comes to us from somewhere — in my opinion, from source, the universe.

And then the water is also generated through us as we chose to direct it.

Imagine that there is a well pump of water. You can attach either a water sprinkler to it, or a firehose.

The water sprinkler diffuses the water, and weakens and fractures it stream into many. (And okay of course water sprinklers are valuable and good when we’re using them for our yards and gardens, but stick with me.)

The firehose, on the other hand, concentrates the water into one steady stream that has a lot more power behind it.

What most of us are doing is taking the source of attention, focus, energy that is given to us, and fracturing it into dozens of different, tiny, weak streams of attention.

We’re turning ourselves and our ability to have attention and focus into a water sprinkler, instead of a firehose.

And thus our power to be in full flow, focus, is weakened and diffused.

Most of us would love to have the firehose of flow available to us. It’s stronger, more direct, more focused, it has more power.

But when we choose to give away our attention to a million different things — the TV is on while the music is on while we’re listening to a podcast while we’re texting a friend and also checking work email — we become the water sprinkler.

And we wonder where our attention goes.

People in power, particularly of massive tech platforms, know that the most valuable and potent currency in the entire world isn’t money, or time. It’s our attention. That’s why all platforms are psychologically designed to capture it. Trump won, as Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes talked about recently, because he is a mastering at capturing others’ attention.

And up against this challenge of reclaiming our attention, we are offered this small but mighty Tarot card: the Two of Pentacles.

The Two of Pentacles is a special card to me for many reasons, and I think, even as an early Minor Arcana, one of the most poignant and important cards to focus and meditate on in the entire deck. Why?

First off, the fellow’s amazing red hat. It is hilariously large and red and pointing towards the sky. It looks like a top hat and a 100x-sized baby bottle nipple combined in a chemical reaction gone wrong.

But the second and most important reason is that the Two of Pentacles is juggling his coins in a green band that wraps around the two coins in the shape of the infinity sign.

The infinity sign only shows up four times in the entire Tarot deck — on the Strength card, above her head; on the Magician card (read my recent post, Trump as the Magician), above his head; on the final Major Arcana, the World card, in the form of two red ribbons encircling the laurel wreath; and here, in the hands of this fellow who’s juggling coins, balancing on one foot and doing it in front of a roiling ocean that’s tossing around ships.

Why? What does it mean?

To me, the infinity symbol represents pure potentiality and ability without limits, and when we can truly tap into the energy available in those cards, that’s what we can achieve. No small feat.

Sure, that makes sense in Strength — facing and healing our ego — and the Magician — our ability to make pure creation — and the World — a final unlocking and completing of a karmic cycle. And those are all the big deal cards, Major Arcanas.

So what does this seemingly-dinky Minor Arcana card, the Two of Pentacles, have to offer us around connecting to our creative ability without limits?

To me, it shows us the power of pure, devotional attention, to the sacred but necessarily limited work we are meant to do here on this earth, in this one lifetime.

Because at its core, the Two of Pentacles is about the focus of attention and devotion and discernment it takes to bring our soul work into the physical plane, and how utterly difficult yet important that can be.

Let’s take a look at this fellow. He’s got a lot going against him, trying to elegantly juggle these coins. There is that ridiculous hat that can’t be comfortable to wear. He’s off balance, standing on one foot, while trying to keep the coins flowing in the juggling of the infinity sign. He could be easily distracted by the turmoil of the roiling sea behind him, bobbing ships up and down.

But he keeps his focus and his gaze on the two coins, because he knows one of the universe’s secrets to devotional purpose work:

Where attention goes, energy flows.

The Two of Pentacles is a card that reveals the power of devotional attention and focus. It’s not easy to be a human doing creative work in a modern world. First off, is just the fact that we have unlimited brains and egos, that could imagine us doing any of millions of sort of amazing things. We could travel! We could write a book! Maybe we should go to culinary school?! Or what about gardening? Damn, we also have to listen to that one podcast we’ve been saving.

But while we have this unlimited, infinite brain and ego, the reality we face is that we live in a finite human body; in a finite time; under oppressive systems like capitalism that dictate we must also somehow earn money; with a lot of responsibilities adjacent to that, to boot.

The Two of Pentacles reminds us of this, and says, hey, it’s not a bad thing, to have this finite experience.

We just have to accept and acknowledge it. Then choose the important work we will do, and put all of our attention on THAT.

I’ll reference once again Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (and I know some of you are new readers he’s recently sent over from a link — welcome!) Have you read it? If not, I highly recommend it. Burkeman’s an entertaining, accessible writer, for one, but secondly, he really touches on the fact that in order to create, we must accept what seems like the unacceptable: we cannot have it all.

The book’s premise is to accept that, on average, we have about four thousand weeks to live, so our lives essentially come down to time management. But current productivity advice is about us controlling and mastering it, instead of confronting and then accepting its finiteness.

We cannot get everything done. We never will. So we must choose with discernment and inspiration, what we WILL get done.

And we must put all of our attention into those tasks.

We have to stop being the water sprinkler, and learn to become the firehose.

It’s a hard reality to accept, that we have limited time, and you can only manifest what you choose to focus your devotional attention on. But that’s when the Two of Pentacles shows up, to remind you of these facts.

Don't get distracted. You have to focus on what is in front of you in order to do your purpose work, and that means you cannot focus on everything. Can you make a devotional choice to focus on the work that is important to your purpose, and not get distracted by the roiling sea behind you (other people’s problems) or other tasks that aren’t strictly aligned to what you feel you are meant to do in this world?

It’s hard to do it, especially if you’re neurodivergent in any capacity. As somebody neurodivergent and with ADHD herself, focus ain’t exactly easy for me.

But when you can accept the reality that we can’t do everything; believe in the possibility that each of us has a soul calling of work; and then find the self-trust and self-worth to focus on the two pentacles we can juggle in this lifetime, that’s when magic can happen in what we are creating here on the physical plane.

So let’s go back to that first newsletter, with the woman who did an experiment of a few weeks of monotasking, who, after she pushed through the screaming and resistance of her brain, stepped through the portal into flow.

What she illustrated for me is this:

At any given time, in the way we use our attention, we have two rivers we can choose to step into.

The way I view it, River 1 is the real river we’re meant to be in. I think of the Tippecanoe River in Northwest Indiana, where I spend every August. It’s a lazy, curving river, with heavy trees on its banks and eagles flying overhead, blue herons crouching on the banks. You sometimes have to effort in your canoe to navigate, but mostly it’s a lazy, beautiful float, with magic around every corner for those who pay sacred attention.

Here’s me canoeing the Tippecanoe a few years ago.

On the other hand, we have River 2.

Oh boy, River 2.

Did any of you ever used to watch Futurama? Amazing show if not. They had the best visual interpretation of what River 2 looks like in my head, so instead of trying to write it out, I’ll just show you this:

Pretty scarily accurate for a show that started in 1999.

Here’s the tough reality:

Most of us live 99% of the time in River 2.

And yes, we are largely manipulated into it.

But we also often do it by choice. We give up our personal agency, and dive face first into the chaos of River 2.

By being in River 2, we turn into the water sprinkler. Our attention becomes diffuse. We try to do a dozen things at once and they all turn out poorly. We despair of ever achieving admittance into flow, or River 1.

Our creative work suffers.

But we forgot our role in living in River 2, our ability to choose, our personal agency.

If, little by little we can start making choices that put us in River 1 more of the time — not necessarily even 100% of the time - 5-20% of the time would be a marked improvement for most of us — our flow state would come, our work would unfold, and we would be directing the powerful river of our attention and intention to what we want to put forth.

We all know the power of flow state for our creative work. Flow state is a psychological concept defined as a mental state of complete immersion, focus, and enjoyment in an activity. Coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, flow occurs when a person is so deeply engaged in a task that they lose track of time and self-consciousness, and their actions seem effortless and fluid.

Ideas come with ease, our focus narrows to its powerful firehouse, time seems to bend, and we turn our devotional efforts to something that really matters.

We’re in River 1, and we’re loving it.

So how do we start spending more time in the magical first river, and escaping the pull of the chaotic, absolutely bonkers and insane River 2?

Simple.

We learn, little by little, to regain our fractured attention.

Instead of a sprinkler, we must become a firehose.

And we start just like the monotasking newsletter author:

We choose to start doing one thing at a time.

We reduce inputs, sensory and informational.

We give ourselves permission for insane amounts of spaciousness in our schedules, as we can (and I know it’s impossible for many of us).

We get ruthless and discard what is truly non-essential.

We declutter and clean and organize to reduce visual overwhelm and stimulation.

We allow ourselves to be bored. (The price of admission to river #1 is intolerable boredom. A high toll to pay, but it’s worth it.)

That’s my invitation to you this week. To start mono tasking, even if it’s just for 5-10 minutes, as a way of beginning to gain entry into River 1, to start to become the firehose once again.

Here are some examples:

• Eat a meal, and just eat the meal. No TV or podcast or media.

• Drive without a podcast or music.

• Walk without a podcast or music.

• In the grocery line or while getting gas, just… stare off into the distance (no checking your phone!)

• Sit and stare at a wall for 5-10 minutes.

• Read a book uninterrupted for 10-20 minutes (no checking your phone!)

• If you’re in a conversation with a friend (whether virtually or in person) just simply be in that conversation.

• Meditation, obviously! (But I hate and suck at meditation, so just saying it’s not the only way, if that’s the case for you, too.)

• Go to bed one night reading a paper book, or just… go to bed. I used to do this all the time as a kid. It was lights out, and I just stared at the ceiling until, you know, I fell asleep. Surely I can do this again?!

• I hate this term, but this thread is funny - “raw dog” an entire movie

It’s not easy. Your brain will scream. Try my little trick I did today as I went on a 20 minute walk without checking my phone: I started chanting to myself, as my brain INSISTED I *must* check my phone, this phrase: “I am walking to the River. I am walking to the River. I am walking to the River.”

What else? My neighbor is teaching me to knit tonight (I exchange Tarot lessons for her knitting lessons!). I am just going to be with the discomfort at staring at my clumsy hands moving, not knowing what I am doing. I’m putting my phone in the other room.

I will listen to my brain scream for distraction, and I will breathe, and I will will myself into the River.

Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

Below, for paid subscribers, enjoy a Tarot spread using the Two of Pentacles on the topic of how you can get back into the River. Get 20% off paid subscriptions to the Sunday Soother until January 31.

And everybody else, stay tuned, because next in the Co-create series, we’ll talk about three ways you can use the power of delegation to energetic sources in your creative work. You don’t have to do it all alone, promise.