Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
The Single Eye
Gather scattered attention ‘to one common center’ — the divine ‘I’ within — by effortless, loving repose rather than willpower, making the ‘eye single’ so the mind reflects truth clearly.
Let the mind settle like a still lake. Use no will power. Turn the single eye inward to the divine “I.” Hold one leading thought; when distracted, substitute the opposite, don’t fight. Optionally plant a seed word, repeated 3-3-1, and let it grow.
What it is
Annie Rix Militz, co-founder of the Homes of Truth, taught concentration as gathering the mind “to one common center” — that center being the divine Self, the “I” within.
Her signature is the single eye: drawing on “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light,” she taught that to “make your eye single to that central self, that divine I, is to feel your mastery.” Crucially, her method rejects strain: “Use no will power to concentrate.” Focus comes by loving repose, not force.
The Method
Militz’s Concentration lessons set out an effortless, devotional practice:
- Still the mind-stuff. Picture the mind as a lake and the mentality as wind: “When this mind-stuff is still and the mentality is quite at peace, then we have a lake all clear and free to reflect perfectly.” Begin by letting the surface settle.
- Use no will power. Do not grip or force. Concentration “flows naturally from loving truth and resting in divine consciousness,” not from effort.
- Make the eye single. Turn attention inward to “that central self, that divine I.” Gathering to this one center is concentration; perception of “the true One in all” is the clearness and brightness of the single eye.
- Hold a leading thought. Take one truth — for example, “Good is all there really is” — and hold it gently. When stray thoughts arise, do not battle them.
- Substitute, don’t suppress. Replace an unwanted thought with its opposite — love for hatred, faith for fear — rather than fighting it directly.
- Plant the seed thought. Retiring inward, mentally repeat a chosen word seven times in groups of three, three, and one, letting it sink in like a seed that grows of itself into deeper consciousness of that quality. (Sourcing note: quoted phrases — “Use no will power,” “make your eye single to that central self,” the lake image — are from Militz’s Concentration; the numbered structure is attributed paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Annie Rix Militz (1856–1924), a student of Emma Curtis Hopkins, founded the Homes of Truth on the Pacific Coast and edited Master Mind magazine.
Her concentration lessons were first given in Los Angeles in 1907 and published in Master Mind in 1914, later collected as Concentration. The “single eye” reading (Matthew 6:22) is her distinctive frame.
Common refinements
Forcing it. Militz’s whole point is no will power; straining muddies the “lake.”
- Fighting thoughts. Don’t suppress — substitute the opposite quality and return gently.
- Treating it as bare attention drill. For Militz the object is devotional (the divine “I”), which is what makes the repose loving rather than effortful.
- Rushing the seed thought. The 3-3-1 repetition is slow and inward, meant to be absorbed, not rattled off.