The key is to keep asking yourself the same question, again and again and again: this is your life - what do you want to pay attention to?
∆ Catherine Price, from How to Break Up with Your Phone
Your experience of life is not based on what happens to you but what you pay attention to.
It is no coincidence that the word "religion" comes from relegare, to focus the attention. All religious praxis is an exercise of attention. The temple is a place of deep attention. According to Malenbrache, attention is the soul's natural prayer. (...) The repetitions make the attention stabilize and deepen. Repetition is the essential feature of rituals. It is distinguished from the routine by its ability to generate intensity.
The reward of attention is the disclosure of a multifaceted reality: the things themselves, the places they shape, the times they mark. By our attention we gain the world and the world becomes a home.