What’s happening to our attention?

I challenge you to read this without interruption…

A scribble of ideas about our current crisis of distraction—and some possible individual and collective ways out…

There are so many doors I could take to begin writing this article, and I am so eager to share so many things with you that I don’t know where to start. Perhaps with what’s always best: the present moment.

The Starting Point: The Present Moment

At this moment I find myself on a terrace at the Golf Club of the Avándaro Hotel. In front of me is a brilliantly green, perfect golf course. Near a small lake, two girls dressed in white play with the water, as if doing something they shouldn’t—they touch the lake and look expectantly, as if someone was going to scold them for getting dirty.

Closer to me is the pool and the lifeguard, who—like in many wealthy places—reminds me of another time. The lifeguard is a dark-skinned young man dressed in a red-and-white uniform so perfect it looks like a costume. He looks at the pool, then looks at his phone repeatedly. His attention is divided between these two worlds, and it seems that’s how he spends his working hours.

Next to me, there’s a table of friends who are clearly American, probably around my age—those terrible thirties where you’re neither this nor that. They talk among themselves and laugh, but they don’t let go of their phones. As if it were an extension of them that gives them security in micro-moments—when someone else talks, they lower their gaze to their intimate dwelling, a little screen that apparently contains their whole world… the one that is truly theirs.

Sometimes I think that if I were from another era and looked at my contemporaries, I would find it very hard to understand them. And sometimes I think I am one of them—but the reality is that I’m just as hooked as they are on those little screens and on the neural networks of the electric internet ocean that replace our presence in the moment, which is the only thing truly intimate that we have.

Now the girls have left and a group of golfers with their caddies have occupied the small bright green hill in front. Only the golfer preparing to hit the little ball and his caddie are without a phone; the other four talk and look at theirs—they even hold their club and phone simultaneously.

What’s happening with our attention?

Today I made a small excursion to a very different place than this club. I went to a beautiful waterfall in the middle of the Valle de Bravo forest. As I walked along the trails leading to the waterfall, I encountered another social environment, diametrically different, of extremely humble people.

Everyone—well, almost everyone, to be honest, except the older people—held their phone and recorded the forest, the waterfall, themselves. It’s as if cameras had replaced our eyes.

Has direct contact with reality become dangerous?…

Even I found myself recording the waterfall and thinking about the story I was going to upload to social media to send a “nice” message and wish my community a happy month.

A Cross-Cutting Crisis: No One Escapes

It is evident that what’s happening with our attention is something that slices across society. No one escapes from escaping reality. And that leads me to ask:

What are we really avoiding?What is this crisis truly about?

What is clear to me is that it is a crisis of our attention, of our presence.

The Etymology of Attention

The etymology of the word “attention” comes from the Latin attentio, which in turn derives from attendĕre, meaning “to stretch the spirit toward,” “to attend.” It seems our attention slips through our fingers, everywhere except where we actually are.

We face a crisis of presence and, as the great teacher Jessica Walker says, “the greater the essence, the greater the presence”… it would seem that this sacred thread that connects us to our essence evaporates more and more, but,

Is it possible to lose it?Is it possible, then, to recover it?

A Small Understanding, a Big Difference

I don’t know about you, but I have carried worry for a long time about my relationship with the virtual world (I say this and feel like someone who might say: “I’m worried about how I drink”), and the reason I felt the urgency to write this and share it with you is because I have finally achieved a minimal understanding (I don’t know if that word is adequate), but certainly a deeper understanding of what happens in our attention crisis and some concrete practices that have brought me a lot of peace and a little bit of hope.

I warn you that this article will be a mix of reflections from different sources: my observation, astrology, philosophy, and some specialist authors on the subject of attention in current times.

As I said, for a long time I’ve been preoccupied by a permanent anguish in feeling that the way I relate to my cellphone, to the networks, to my computer, to the internet, is not healthy. At first, like many, I thought it was a lack of self-regulation on my part.

Of course, behind it there is a whole system, but for a long time I believed it was, more than anything, a kind of lack of willpower to resist that dopamine dose that the virtual world pushes at us every time we extend our hand.

It’s so available, so close, so easy, so hard to resist... And then the emptiness, like an emotional hole that comes after satisfying that impulse, not delaying it.

Besides the emptiness, I remain with a feeling of saturation: the thousands of conversations at once that one couldn’t hold in reality with so many people simultaneously, like when you eat more than you can digest, but you also ate everything that doesn’t nourish you… the memes (my great fascination), the reels, the news, the ads, the Instagram messages but also those from WhatsApp and Messenger and Telegram, the email… saturation.

And lastly, the energy drop that comes afterward. Once the impulse is sated and our receptors saturated, we realize that something is not right, that it’s not real.

At first I judged myself heavily for not being able to dial down my addiction to the virtual world. But later I began to try to observe myself without so much judgment (or even with it), but in a calmer way. A kind of: “let’s see, let’s see, what’s happening here”…

Three Alarm Symptoms

One of the indicators that prompted me to take action was that I could no longer read books. I was incapable of concentrating for at least 15 consecutive minutes in a book without needing to peek at my phone. And beyond that, I was incapable of concentrating in slow, linear reading.

Nor could I sit down to meditate, or sit with a friend and listen to her without my phone in sight; it gave me anxiety. Much of this I justified with my hyperactivity: “I can’t concentrate because I have a lot in my head, because I’m a workaholic, because I force myself to a fast life with too many things”… But the thing was a little more complex than that. Of course, there was the emotional factor, I observed. I get distracted by the virtual world because I can’t sustain intimacy with my friend, with my own life. Yes, that was a truth… but there was more.

When making self-observation a more constant practice, I began noticing subtleties I had not noticed before. I began leaving my phone far away in moments when I didn’t need it, turning off the internet modem, and the first thing I noticed is that I felt disoriented. Spatially disoriented.

If I was not in front of or near a screen, with the internet on, or listening to something (a podcast, an audiobook, music), I didn’t seem to be able to give clear direction to my action. I didn’t know how to move. This worried me greatly. It made me feel invalid in the real world.

I realized that my brain was replicating that virtual way of connecting to something that was not virtual and creating a heavy short circuit. The sensation was like a withdrawal syndrome, added to a heavy, foggy, overwhelming sluggishness. As if moving through real time was crossing through thick jelly, without direction or reference.

Now I cannot claim that I’m in a place very different from where I was at that time, but I’ve been doing things slightly differently for several months and this has allowed me, a little, to recover my perception and my thinking.dio, I didn’t know how to move forward. It frightened me. I felt a real-world invalidity.

Own Thought: The Great Key of this Era

Recovering one’s own thought… a key of this Age of Aquarius we’ve just entered, which seems increasingly difficult.

Each Astrological Age (a period of approximately 2,160 years) has its challenge, as if it were the subject we all must take collectively. Aquarius is an air sign, therefore mental. It represents Original Thought.

This era has much to do with finding one’s own authenticity, with awareness that we are a network of authenticities: Each one is a sun, their own center, but the centers are interconnected. That’s why the internet emerged with Saturn in Aquarius in the ’90s, and hence the importance of communities and networks in this era.

It is clear that if we want to survive as a species, we will have to collaborate—and for good reason, current series like El Eternauta or The Handmaid’s Tale reflect this message from the collective unconscious. Alone we cannot.

The Shadow of Aquarian Communication

The thing is that this model of communication, which I would dare to call the shadow of Aquarius, leaves us lonelier than ever because it doesn’t provide real connection with others nor with the terrestrial system of which we are part.

First, it’s vital we understand that we’re dealing with a collective crisis—a barehanded robbery of our attention. It’s not a personal problem of you or me.

We cannot exit it alone, but at the same time we could say each one, as the center of their life, must take responsibility for their relationship with virtuality and technology.

Johan Hari says in his book Stolen Focus (a gem, by the way):

“We live in a distraction machine, and blaming ourselves for not being able to concentrate is like blaming someone for not sleeping while someone screams in their ear all night.”

The whole system is designed to retain your attention as long as possible. The new capitalism, called “Surveillance Capitalism,” feeds off your attention:

“Every time you look at your phone, you are participating in a machine designed to make you come back. Not to inform you. Not to educate you. Not to help you. To make you return… You’re not the customer. You’re the product sold to the real customers: advertisers. They’re selling your attention… We live in an economy that rewards interruption, not attention. That monetizes distraction and penalizes presence.”

If you hadn’t already experienced the darkness of Facebook or Instagram and someone told you about platforms where we can connect with friends, learn about their lives, create dialogues about shared topics, arrange physical meetings… you’d probably say: “What a phenomenal use of technology to connect us!” But social media platforms and communication platforms are not designed to connect you in real life—they don’t profit from that.

Less time on the platform equals less of your time they can sell to the highest bidder.

“Platforms are not built so that we collaborate, understand, or listen. They are designed to maximize the time we spend looking at screens. And that’s achieved more easily if we’re divided, outraged, or anxious.”

And as dear Johan says, not only do they not want us to connect, but what keeps us hooked are often mockery, news triggering hate specifically targeted by the algorithm to what polarizes you.

Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, testified before the U.S. Senate in 2021 about how the company deliberately promoted hate, disinformation, and polarization—prioritizing profits over users, especially noting the impact on teenagers:

“Company leaders know how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but won’t make the necessary changes because they put astronomical profits above people.”

“Facebook’s own research shows that Instagram is toxic for teen girls. They know content that makes users feel worse about themselves performs better in terms of engagement.”

That’s how we hand over our attention, impoverishing our present experience while inevitably absorbing a polarized mindset which generates polarized emotion.

The Perfect Polarization Circle

Don’t be surprised then that what we carry inside manifests outside in the forms we most despise. You see how it’s a perfect circle: I insert a polarized idea that you swallow without digesting (and insert it at a speed you can’t process) and you project it into your reality. Then I can tell you in a reel: “See how that is reality?”

And to what end? For the oldest and most boring obviousness in history: to sustain “power” (if that’s what we want to call power). But maintain a form of power and a structure as dense as we collectively uphold, in a moment when frequency is subtleizing and large amounts of light are entering Earth, requires subtle strategies as fast as the current frequency.

Even to the most skeptical, it’s evident that things are changing. Who can throw the first stone and say “I’m not experiencing a radical change or crisis in my consciousness”? But the “powerful,” who’ve believed they own humanity’s fate, won’t easily relinquish the throne or share it in an Aquarian horizontal community.

When I finished writing this article, I went to my friend Yan’s house and she asked me to read it aloud. I want to include one of her brilliant contributions: Saying “the powerful” as if it refers to a group that needs to feed on others’ attention is not logical—but it's how we've experienced it for a long time. In some way, many of us have resigned ourselves to believing that “someone else,” a “group of powerful people,” will dictate what happens in collective terms—who would think they could change social media or technology policies? It would seem we, as users, have nothing to do with these decisions… but is that true?

Projecting the power outward has been a form of learning we’ve needed for quite some time—a childishness, adolescent-like. This is fine; each learning stage has its time, and it’s important not to slip into the polarity of good and evil, but that doesn’t mean we fail to see things as they are.

Who benefits if we lose presence and attention? Because they’re not going to tell me that such a carefully designed system that steals our present is merely a “defective” way of using technology. This challenge of seeing polarity without succumbing to it is a fundamental part of our maturation as human beings in the Age of Aquarius. The only way to take responsibility for what we do, and in what we participate individually and collectively, is to see it and contact reality.

Power, as frequency, is oneself—how we decide to experience it is part of our soul-level decision. As souls belonging to the same era, we have chosen this form. We are not victims, but neither should we naively assume this system is innocent or harmless…

Regarding the Cosmic Explanation

Here (with dedication to all skeptics), I want to include what Bárbara Hand‑Clow says in her book Pleiadian Cosmology, about this web that interferes and interrupts our attention constantly. I know some will say: “This person is crazy! She started sane and now she’s talking about cosmos and extraterrestrials!” Yes—that’s me.

Honestly, I considered removing this part because I truly want this article to be shared—I feel it could open the dialogue about this crisis. But if I had removed this following part, it wouldn’t be consistent with what I propose: intellectual freedom. So here it is, this explanation (brilliant from my perspective) about how, on more subtle levels, this network of interruptions and distortions of our own human perception was generated:

“Earth was enclosed in an electromagnetic grid that prevents direct access to other dimensions. This mesh was installed to manipulate humanity and prevent it from awakening to its true cosmic heritage… Extraterrestrial forces that came to Earth millennia ago installed this grid to control human consciousness… They manipulated genetics and blocked the natural energy flow between humans and the cosmos… The grid was designed to keep humans in a state of forgetting, limiting their perceptions to a narrow band of frequencies… The ascension process involves dismantling that artificial grid. As the Earth’s electromagnetic field changes, the grid weakens and each human being can access their multidimensionality again.”

We know Earth’s frequency is changing—we see it in the Schumann Resonance which has skyrocketed, along with the number of solar flares and the flood of photon light we’re experiencing because our solar system is passing through the Photon Belt. This is something concrete—I’m not speaking of New Age inventions, though few people take the time to check before dismissing these valuable and basic pieces of information.

We are facing what Bárbara calls “the Cosmic Party,” because indeed these frequency changes generate immense expansion in consciousness—and that’s why so many people view the world and their lives in a new way, with more awareness, because more light (literally) is entering our system.

Attention Crisis and Spiritual Connection

I, who work to help people connect with their spiritual channel, realize that this attention crisis directly affects our ability to connect with subtle planes and with our own soul, our inner spiritual life.

Even our imagination—which Rudolf Steiner named as a higher faculty of thought and soul—has been severely diminished because we consume images already made, which impoverish our internal imagination: those soul-eyes each of us has through which we uniquely and sacredly perceive the world.

Now that I’ve gone back to reading novels (because I had also abandoned literature), I realize how rich it is to enter someone else’s world, how it makes me more sensitive to my own, and even helps me empathize with others. To return to reading I had to overcome the idea that it was a “waste of time,” and now each morning, before turning on the Wi‑Fi modem and checking my phone, I read half an hour—and my day “wires” completely differently.

Right now I’m reading The God of Small Things, a wonder of interior narration about two Indian twins. Each time I read and then go out into the street, I look at people with new eyes, much more curious… “How do they live inside the valet parking attendant, or the waiter, or my little neighbor Elian?”

Hari, expert on attention, indeed notes the importance of reading fiction in his book:

“Reading long novels helps develop empathy because it forces you to leave your own head and enter another person’s mind, living with them, feeling with them for many hours… The novel is a technology of empathy. There is no other medium that takes you so deeply into another person’s emotional world for so long.”

I remember in my teens sitting to read Virginia Woolf beneath the large trees of Isla del Tigre in Buenos Aires. “I chose the wrong era,” I thought sometimes, because I enjoyed being transported to the Victorian era. Okay, I was always weird and read strange things for my age—but my friends were still reading back in the 2000s. Today I don’t know a teenager I could gift a book to and expect them to get excited. Well—maybe one or two rare ones, like me.

Who has time to read now? I wonder, as if it were a luxury to give yourself non-productive time… but the reality is we all have it. Just ask your iPhone for the daily screen time report and you’ll see you do. What happened then to the conscious choice of how we use our time?

Facing all this I’m exposing, I’m struck by the frustration and anger you might be experiencing, as I did (and do):

How do we get out of here?

How do we protect children and youth?

How to do it if it seems we need to stay plugged into the virtual world to “survive”?

It seems that if we are absent even for a day, the supreme being of the virtual world (the one who takes attendance) will give us a big red “F” that will bring terrifying consequences: What if I lose followers, students, friends?

It’s a phantom threat but at the same time it triggers our deepest survival mechanism.

Humans have always fallen into that big lie—perhaps because we don’t truly trust in life after death and believe survival is our only and most important mission.

Ask a teenager today how they feel if their Instagram or TikTok account gets deleted… They almost face death if they lose their virtual identity.

This perverse play on survival enables something very dangerous for these times: losing one’s own thought. And I’m not saying that’s good or bad—I’m saying it’s dangerous precisely because it’s a loop, a repetition without memory from other times, that has created a lot of trauma and which I believe, or want to believe, is no longer necessary in that way for our human learning.

We have lost the moments that Johan Hari calls “mind-wandering”—letting the mind drift aimlessly, for example, on a silent walk. We’ve also lost boredom—so crucial for creativity.

These moments, along with reading, are essential for developing independent thought. We have demonized thinking, but it’s one of the factors that makes us human—Rudolf Steiner writes in his book Philosophy of Freedom:

“Thought is a spiritual organ of perception, in the same way the eye is for light.”

In this increasingly polarized and stunned scheme, there is little space left to develop what allows us to be human—and even more, to be responsible for our humanity and our decisions.

This was brilliantly confirmed by Hannah Arendt in her book The Banality of Evil. Arendt was a brilliant thinker, student of Heidegger. Jewish in Nazi Germany, she managed to escape to the U.S., and in 1961 The New Yorker asked her to report on the Eichmann trial in Israel—Eichmann being one of the main organizers of the “Final Solution.”

In the trial Arendt had a short circuit: the man in front of her didn’t speak like the Nazi monster she expected. He seemed like a normal person. Eichmann argued—as many before him—that he was “just following orders.” In Argentina, a similar claim emerged with the “Full Stop/Due Obedience Law” after the dictatorship, saying lower-ranking officers were “just following orders” when they took power and disappeared and tortured thousands.

In her brilliant and much-criticized book, Arendt said:

“The lesson this long course of horrors teaches is the terrifying banal‑ity of evil. Evil has no depth, nor a demon behind it. It can only wreak havoc in the world because many, like Eichmann, are not perverts or sadists, but simply thoughtless. This thoughtlessness is not stupidity, but a curious and authentic incapacity to think.”

What do we face now, in a time when we’re losing space and time to think and reflect? How might this affect our political, economic lives, but also our internal presence that enables us to feel, know ourselves, connect, empathize, connect to higher realms?

Let’s Talk Solutions

Because it’s useless to describe our state if we don’t think about taking action. And for that, we’ll need a lot of courage, because what must change deeply impacts our daily lives.

Cal Newport, in his book Deep Work, says:

“The capacity to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained. This ability must be protected and strengthened in a world full of distractions.”

In a system that seeks to constantly interrupt us, we have to find collective ways to help ourselves remain present.

Did you know?

“When we’re interrupted, it takes an average of 23 minutes to return to the level of concentration we were at… Imagine what this means in a typical workday. Even if you only check your phone briefly—a notification, a message, a news headline—that little distraction can trigger a cascade of attention loss that ruins nearly half an hour of focus.”

Just like an addict finds it hard not to drink or smoke in the presence of others doing it, we must understand that we’re all addicted to virtuality and need real support networks to start addressing a problem that has enormous real-world impact.

Individual Actions

I would say that before we try to change things, we should observe them. What does it say about us?

The first thing I would ask you—or leave you as a perpetual question as you immerse yourself in virtual reality—is: What are you avoiding? What is it about reality that you find intolerable and choose to flee into another, virtual reality? Now, I’m not saying that all our motivation to go on social media is about avoidance, but it’s a good question to ask yourself repeatedly.

In this sense, something fundamental that helps me a lot to observe and sustain what I feel (meaning accompany myself to feel instead of avoid it) is therapy. You need tools—training to accompany yourself—because, paradoxically, no one teaches it to us. In my experience, Gestalt Therapy and Somatic Therapy have been foundational for building a much more solid basis in my relationship with myself. We have many tools in this era—use them! If you need therapist recommendations, feel free to write me or look for them yourself. Remember: your best compass is you.

Practical Recommendations

Now I take the liberty of leaving you some very concrete recommendations—from Johan Hari and other authors—to reclaim your attention:

1. Deliberate Digital Disconnection

   “You cannot rebuild your attention if you allow every second to be invaded by a notification.”

   • Turn off notifications and delete unnecessary apps

   • Set fixed schedules to check email or social media

   • Have screen-free zones or days (e.g. an “offline Saturday”)

     
     

2. Time Blocking

   “A fragmented mind cannot produce deep thought.

   • Attention needs uninterrupted time.”

   • Group similar tasks in distraction-free blocks.Reserve daily time for sustained attention (reading/writing)

   • Use timers or Pomodoro (25 min focus, 5 min break)

1. Mindfulness & Meditation“Mindful attention not only calms the mind, it trains it. It’s a way to remember how to live in the present.”

   • Meditate daily, even 5–10 min

   • Practice conscious breathing in moments of stress

   • Incorporate mindfulness into daily tasks (eating, walking, showering)g

     
     

Deep, Screen-Free Reading“Reading long novels helps develop empathy, because it forces you to leave your own head and enter another’s mind.”

• Read physical books daily, at least 20–30 min

• Create rituals for reading (a set place, light, soft music or silence)

• Avoid multitasking while reading (no phones nearby)

  
  

Allow Boredom & Mind-Wandering“Moments when you're not focused on anything are the mind’s laboratory. That’s where your most important ideas emerge.”

• Walk without music or phone

• Have voluntary idle moments during the day

• Don’t fill every wait (queues, transport, bathroom) with digital stimuli

1. Good Sleep & Deep Rest“Without adequate sleep, your brain cannot function properly. It's like trying to operate a machine with low battery.”

   • Sleep 7–9 hours, at regular times

   • Shut off screens at least one hour before bed

   • Get natural light exposure in the morning

   
   

1. Create Focus-Friendly Environments“The place where you are can be your ally or your enemy in the fight for attention.”

   • Organize your workspace: fewer visual distractions

   • Use natural light, remove visual and auditory distractions

   • Listen to instrumental music if it helps, or complete silence

   
   

   

2. Cultivate Real, In-Person Relationships“Attention blossoms where there is genuine human connection.”

   • Prioritize face-to-face meetings

   • Schedule screen-free conversations

   • Practice active listening: eye contact, no interruptions, complete presence

   
   

   In Conclusion (and Celebration)

   
   

   First of all: Kudos if you've read this far—that’s proof of your attention power!

   
   

   Now, dear reader, I ask you: What do you think of this matter? What else could you do to reclaim your attention? What comes to mind when you hear "time for yourself"?

   
   

   Yes, it’s true—this situation, like many toxic global conditions, will demand willpower and discipline, breaking automatic patterns… But the answer also lies in enjoyment. When we give up some virtual demand and enjoy a walk, a spa, painting, reading, a conversation—we truly savor it and wonder, “Why don’t I do this more often?”

   
   

   Now Saturn, the great teacher of will, enters Aries—the sign of self and desire—perhaps it's time to wish for what we must do, and to do it with the enjoyment of choosing. Our highest manifestation is coherence between desires and present action.

   
   

   Meanwhile, Pluto—the planet teaching about power—has entered Aquarius for 20 years. Its shadow is what we’ve discussed: tech of disconnection, cold soulless networks, individualism, globalization. But its deeper meaning is power returning to the individual—a network-aware individual… dear friends, that is a great human superpower. Let's not forget: “human” comes from hummus, the earth.

   
   

   The decision is ours.

   
   

   To close, let me share a quote from Claudio Naranjo (thank you for so much, teacher):

“Freedom is not doing what one wants, but ceasing to be what one is not.”

If this article helped you, share it—it’s the only way to spark collective awakening. And now: Write your own piece—essay, poem, story—about this topic. Communication has impact.

You’re invited to send it to: akashicrecordscommunity@gmail.com and we’ll publish it on our blog.

With much love and gratitude for your attention,

Tamara Ciriza,

Akashic Records Community

Who is Tamara Ciriza?

How hard it is to define oneself in a few words.

Every adjective feels too big and too small at once.

I’m currently 32 years old and have been working with the Akashic Records for over 15 years.

For me, my work—at least for now—is about promoting, sharing, and teaching what I call “Spiritual Autonomy.”

I absolutely believe in our capacity—and current need—as human beings to reclaim our own compass, our direct and conscious connection with the soul and spiritual world.

I’ve always been curious about what I used to call “the world behind things” as a child. That’s why (and because I’m fascinated) I’m an astrologer and have dabbled in shamanism, Tarot, Anthroposophy, and Theosophy.

I am currently completing my training in Gestalt Therapy, to whom I owe a large part of my humanization path and a renewed hope in humanity.