 Attention is directed not by will but by a particular kind of desire without an object. It is not a “muscular effort” but a “negative effort” (WFG 61), involving release of egoistic projects and desires and a growing receptivity of the mind. For Weil, as a Christian Platonist, the desire motivating attention is oriented toward the mysterious good that “draws God down” (WFG 61). In her essay “Reflections on the Right use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God” (1942 in WFG 57–65), Weil takes prayer, defined as “the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God”, as her point of departure (WFG 57). She then describes a kind of vigilance in her definition of attention: