Where Is Your Attention?

If you study meditation or mindfulness, you will quickly learn that it is all about paying closer attention to the world both outside of you, and inside of you. The key to paying closer attention to things seems may sound simple, but it can be hard to do in practice, as many people that start learning meditation or mindfulness quickly find out.

A metaphor that I've found really useful is to think of our attention as being like the beam of a flashlight. When we deliberately direct our attention, we are making a conscious decision to turn on that flashlight, focus it, and observe what becomes visible in the resulting pool of light.

It is up to us where we decide to shine the beam of our attention, and how we focus it. Just like a flashlight, the beam of your attention is limited in size, so you cannot shine it everywhere at once. But we can focus it, making it smaller or wider.

The Chaotic Attention Beam

Most people have a rather chaotic beam of attention. If their eyes are open, they struggle to direct their attention to just one sense, such as what they are seeing. Internal thoughts, emotions and mental chatter are constantly intruding on their ability to really focus the beam of their attention on just one thing.

People with chaotic attention get easily distracted and are easily manipulated. Social media has turned out to be a really effective method to make you feel like you have focused attention, while disguising how little focus you really have.

Strengthening the Attention Beam

We can strengthen our attention beam by learning to more carefully differentiate all the different senses in our consciousness, both external (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) and internal (memory, thinking, emotions, imagination, balance), and focus our attention on just one at a time.

Going with the Flow vs Being in the Flow

'Going with the flow' is when you deliberately don't direct your attention anywhere in particular, rather, you observe where your attention goes by default. It can be a very revealing way to find out what sensory information you tend to focus on by default.

In contrast, being in the flow is a state where control of your attention beam has become so skilled that you can focus it effortlessly on one thing, and have it stay there unwaveringly, with almost no effort. Your brain becomes more efficient, so you stay calm, even while staying very focused on the object of your attention. People report not noticing the time, background noises and other distractions, leading to high levels of productivity and creativity.

DIRECTED ATTENTION CHANGES YOUR BRAIN

Neuroscientists have verified that repetitive mental practice in directed attention will increase the density of brain matter in the area of the brain being used. The brain works like a muscle, so repeated practice of even simple consciousness exercises such as those found in the Exercises page will strengthen the brain over time. Neuroscientists call this ability of the brain neuroplastiscity.

To explore your consciousness in a deeper way, you need complete mastery over your attention. That means developing mental muscle memory of many different ways of directing, focusing and shifting your attention on a lot of differentiated senses, both external and internal.