Paying Attention to Our AtTeNtIoN

 

 

Today I want you to think about one thing... you, and I would like you to focus on you. No, this is not an exercise in selfishness; it is one in attention, namely the discovery of where our attention lies. You may wonder why it is important, what it means to us and how considering it benefits us. Pay attention is the basis of mindfulness, which is something that's of utmost importance in both personal and spiritual growth. We will take our first look at it in this essay and it will come up in others in both the curriculum and other essays. 

By attention I am referring to our conscious attention and becoming more aware of how and where we direct it. We all go about our lives doing thinking things and so on. As we do we tend to notice certain “things” first. We key in on features of people, or pay attention to particular objects or shapes. Where we place our attention is not something most of us are very conscious of and we are usually unaware of why. If one wants to become a better, more aware or even enlightened person this is an essential place to start.

We know though may not realize that the majority of our minds doings, the processing of perceptions and the information we take in, occurs at the non-conscious or sub-conscious level. As we go about our day, we have experiences and many, many thoughts about them. Some of these we are conscious of, the majority we are not.

What we pay attention to and how we react to our experiences depends on our history of reactions. Our past reactions include our perceptions of/thoughts about them experiences and their consequences and so on. They affect what aspects of our experiences we pay attention during it as well as any choices me make or actions we take as a result of them. it.

For instance, when we enter a room our attention goes to what our Rational Mind (RM) has deemed most important, something we aren't typically conscious of. It could be the size of the room, the objects or people in it, where the other exits are, where certain things may be in the room and so on. Of course it varies from person to person and on other factors such as what's going on at the time, the circumstances of and the reasons reasons for our entering it and so on. Another example would be what we notice first about the people we encounter. For some it's their clothing and for others particular physical features. It's worth noting that our minds tend to do more non-conscious mental processing involved when it comes to people versus other physical objects.

Both of these examples show how we illustrate that each of us pays attention to certain things first. The answer to the question of why certain things get our attention is the following: our previous reactions to experiences have trained our RM to react this way and where our attention goes is essentially the tail end of this process.

 

 

It is important to notice where our attention goes as we can learn a great deal about ourselves by noticing what catches it. In many cases, the purpose of our attention to one thing over others is to assess the situation to determine if there are any threats to us. Beyond the benefits to personal growth through greater self awareness noticing what we are attentive to is of the greatest value to us is when we are interacting with people, including ourselves, or find ourselves in new situations for it shows what we think is most important in a given situation.

What is it that we notice first about others and what does this tell us about ourselves? The reality is that we train our RM to notice certain things about people for any number of reasons. We base our reaction to current experiences on our previous reactions. We look for certain features, or signs of some kind from people that they meet a certain criteria. Where our attention goes tells us a great deal about ourselves, including how we have programmed our RM. Would it not be nice to know the criteria our RM uses? Not the ones you are conscious of, rather the ones the non-conscious aspect our RM (which pre-processes what we perceive) considers when it is determining what we will eventually become consciously aware of.

The idea that we are not typically conscious of our “true” reactions to experiences may seem odd, most figure that what they think about is their raw thoughts about the experience they are having. This is not the case. Our RM actually goes through a process to determine what thoughts we will have consciously, with a significant portion of this being done at the non-conscious level. Where our attention goes is part of this process and affects how we react and the thoughts we have about the experience. We can use an awareness of where our attention goes to help us find the reasons for it and if needed we can change our reactions and thereby ourselves.

One of the most common determinants of where our attention is directed is a result of our minds assessment of risk. Others are personal interest, curiosity, desire and strong thoughts about some aspect of what is perceived. For instance, the desire to explore can outweigh the risks to ones person or something we do not like takes our attention away from everything else. We all have our own set of priorities, which are the result of how we have programmed our RM. This set of priorities are what guides where our mind focuses its attention.

I will digress for a moment to touch on how our mind works. Figuratively, the RM is the sum of all our thoughts and the webs of thought constructs that bind them together. It includes our ego, reasoning skills, beliefs, thoughts about things, ideas and constructs that represent our mental blocks and filters and so on. Generally speaking, we are only consciously aware of a few of the enormous body of thoughts we have in our minds. The thoughts that we are conscious of are those related to whatever it is we are thinking and those related to what we perceive. If this were not the case we would be unable to focus our attention at all due to information overload.

 

 

Further simplifying our conscious stream of thoughts is how our minds create gestalts so we do not have to think of every detail of something. For example, when we are picking up a glass, our mind amalgamates what it perceives into one unit, a glass and the actions of the parts of our arms, hands and figures and so on required to reach for and grasp it into gestalts. 

Our RM will continue to process its experiences in the fashion it does unless we change how it does. We are unlikely to do so unless we work on the thoughts we hold. This is where noticing where our attention and also the thoughts we are aware of at the time very helpful. For this reason, having an idea of the process our mind goes through can help us to learn how to notice its doings and what we may want to change about how it does it. With this in mind, I will lay out this process a linear, sequential fashion. It does not actually occur this way as the steps occur simultaneously. By this I am referring to how we can have an active thought stream about something going on even as our mind continues to react to what we perceive or or are doing mostly in the background beyond our conscious attention.

This reaction process happens very quickly as thoughts are energy and the dynamics of their interactions are near instantaneous. The lag only comes in when brain is activated to bring language or symbols into it, which includes the processing of them by brain. We will look at how our mind process experiences in great detail in a number of other essays; however, some key aspects of it are relevant here.

To this end, imagine each thought (regardless of the type) as a huge composite tuning fork where each fork is an attribute of the thought and your mind is a field or collection of them. Thoughts are connected by commonalities and every one is "exposed" to what is perceived the moment it is. Those thoughts that have some commonality with what is perceived, and even others connected to them, react to it to varying degrees. In the process thoughts may be modified and new ones added. 

These reactions will continue until all reactions are complete and the experience has been fully integrated. How long it takes depends on the impact of our perception of the experience on the thoughts we already hold, which is why at times it take take a very long time for this to happen, sometimes it can take our whole life to do so. We are not conscious of these reactions unless they are strong/vibrant enough to gain our conscious attention or we are very skilled practitioners of mindfulness. 

I refer to this process as the Experience Reaction Sequence and as mentioned it is not linear. Every reaction of a thought also becomes an experience that leads to yet another reaction sequences. Despite this we can simplify, at least conceptually as follows:

 

Experience Reaction Sequence  

• A stimulus (experience) occurs (the stimulus can be external or our own thoughts, emotions or sensations)
• The initial reaction to the stimulus is at the non-conscious level of the RM
• Our thoughts react to the perceived stimulus (collectively these reactions are our initial perception of it).
• Each reaction is also a stimulus starting another reaction chain.
• We only become consciously aware of the stimulus after our minds have processed its initial reactions. The mind can block our awareness of it. An example of this is buried thoughts related to traumatic experiences.
• The basis of the reaction is all our previous thoughts. If we already have a thought form for it the experience will activate it otherwise it will manifest a new thought. When we have no existing thoughts that can process the stimulus the mind can "stuck" and unsure what to think about it. In this case our mind will try to find something to relate it to or try to create one; however it needs existing thoughts to do this. What was perceived, which is in itself a thought, will remain and maybe used at a later time when we have thoughts that it can be related to. 
• The previous steps are what our minds go through to integrate our reaction to an experience or stimulus. Most of our reactions are in the form of thoughts and in turn the emotions they manifest or activate and physiological responses. 
• What we become consciously aware of are thoughts that are the most energetic/vibrant and ones that have not been blocked by our minds as mentioned. This applies mostly to abstract and conceptual thoughts as we are almost always conscious of what is perceived with our senses though we may not be aware of our thoughts about what we perceive. At times we may not even notice something that is right in front of us though this is generally due to our being distracted or we are directing our attention in a way that limits what we see or hear or feel.

  

Borderline Conscious Level – Rational Mind Editor

Our RM sorts through the thoughts it has about its reaction to the experience. The basis our RM uses to determine what is important for us to be consciously aware of is what it has learned from the past. The initial reaction to what is perceived is not all that it considers. Other thoughts with some connection to what was perceived as well as the minds reaction to it also come into play. Put another way, our minds also react to its own reactions. It will do this until the experience is fully integrated.

This process can go on for some time, which is something we have all experienced whenever we struggle to understand it or there are unresolved questions. Thinking or saying "I am  still trying to get my head around this" is an example of this. It is also worth noting that the RM may also integration various aspects of an experience together, which also results in connections being formed between the grouped aspects. Such connections most often occur when there is, for example, a "logical" relationship between them or a strong emotional component to our reaction to an experience. 

Unless we are very mindful we tend to not notice most of what our mind does in the background during the integration process. The main reasons are most are not very mindful, the minds reactions are very rapid and most have "noisy minds" that distract them. Also, we can have programmed our minds to not make us aware of certain things. The mind goes through this process continually and below are the general steps it follows. 

Start of Decision Loop

1. Initial Reaction: the RM reacts to a perceived stimulus (experience). 
2. Initial Perception: Active thoughts and those activated due to have some commonality with the experience are used to integrate the experience. These thoughts are used by the RM. They lead to its initial perception of what was perceived. This can be referred to as the initial and #1 most honest unedited perception of what was experienced. 
3. RM Integrates the Experience: The RM considers all the activated thoughts (Step 2) to integrate the experience . It does so based on how we have programmed it to react.
4. Conscious Awareness of the Experience: Once the RM has a perception of an experience it decides if we are to be consciously aware of our thought(s) about the experience. It does so based on its prior programming (the programming is also in the form of thoughts) and considers what we have come to prefer to avoid, what we can handle, like, do not like, want and so on. 
5. Decision:
   1. If, based on what comes out of Step 4, the RM decides this is not something we want to be conscious of it then it repeats Step 3 to come up another versions of the experience. It may even stop integrating it altogether if its something deemed to be too sensitive for us to be conscious of (ex. blocked traumatic experiences). 
   2. If the RM decides this is something that is palatable to us we will become consciously aware of it and go to Step 6.
6. End of Loop: We become consciously aware of the experience. That we become consciously aware of it means it is something our RM Editor has determined we can be consciously aware of; however, it may still continue to examine and integrate the experience in the background.

 

 

The above mostly applies to thoughts about what we experience rather than sensory aspects of it. By this I mean that the RME is used the least when doing physical or mundane things such as walking, moving around, grasping things or thinking about simple tasks and so on. At the same time, we can still miss sensory aspects as well. Examples of this are when we are looking for something do not see it or bump into something that is directly in our line of sight though these things typically occurs when we are distracted. 

I wanted to share the above so that you were aware of the main aspects of the process so you can pay it more attention (be more mindful). Further discussion of the RME process is found in the in the Improving Our Honesty (1) exercise, if you have been working through the curriculum you should be familiar with it, and the essay Intuitive Indulgences (2). 

You will note, from the sequence that our reaction focuses our attention be it conscious or otherwise. In relation to personal growth, understanding how we react to experiences and why starts with being mindful, which includes noticing where our attention goes. Knowing what catches our attention gives us a starting point to exploring why. A key benefit of this is we can notice issues we need to work on and if we continue doing so it helps us get a better understanding of our mental house. 

A number of factors affect what we pay attention to and focus on. Main items on the list are our state of mind, the thoughts we hold, which include what is important to us, perceived risks and like or dislike and so on, and what we are experiencing at the time.  For example, our attention is different with someone we know than with someone we do not or when we walk in a room and focus on certain elements of the room and its furnishings.

The risk processing of our mind plays a significant role in our interactions with others. Most tend to train their minds in a way that leads them to prefer certainty to attain a particular comfort level. This is why it is a challenge to repair trust once it has been broken. When trust has been violated or broken our mind can find it hard to reduce the risk with the person(s) will do it again below our threshold for concern. In order to feel safe or at least safer when we interact with them our RM will focus attention on whatever it feels it needs to be aware of. When this occurs we should be mindful that when we are afraid we can let our emotional reactions take precedence over rational thought. 

The point of paying attention to our minds doings rather than letting it act at the nonconscious level is so we notice the why's behind our thinking and choices. For instance, few are aware of what is most important to them when they meet someone new. We will only know if we notice where our attention goes when we first perceive them. Is it their clothes, their overall appearance, particular attributes or bodily features, the look on their face, how they walk or carry themselves and so on. If we can determine this then we can start to understand why.

This comes into play when we meet someone for the first time and like him or her. Do we know why? Something about them caught your attention upon which you based your decision to like them. What was it? To get at this we may have to stop and ask ourselves why rather than just carry on ignore it. When we do so we should try to avoid preconceiving the reason(s). Instead, we should let our mind wander almost aimlessly over the thoughts that come to mind as mentioned above as it can help us find the thoughts that led to our decision. One very good way is to notice where our eyes go when we first view someone and let the thoughts about this surface without attaching to them. 

 

 

We know that when we are driving a car, the car goes to where we are looking. When you are taking a corner, you look where you want the car to go and you steer based on that. In life, where our attention goes steers us. Learning where we are steering ourselves helps a great deal for through it we can start to explore why we are steering ourselves the way we are.

Learning to notice where our attention goes is an incremental process. It is challenging, at first, to even notice where we place it because we usually pay no attention to it. The mind will waffle about with the possibilities, as mentioned above, to determine the most palatable and important thoughts both of which it was trained to do by our reactions to experiences. Therefore, we have to peel away some of our editing process to even find out where we are putting out attention.

This is even more the case when our reaction is negative for such reactions tend to contain the highest risk. Such situations can have us caught in the lower emotions of our reaction or perhaps feel “out of sorts”. Neither of these is very conducive to helping us find where our attention is going. In this case, we are dealing with what people refer to as “our buttons”. In order to be clearer in the moment, more balanced in life and more aware in general, learning where our attention goes is of great help.

Everyone wants to have less “buttons to push” to be in a sense invincible rather than vulnerable. The path to it is to render our minds more transparent. A tree has leaves that catch the wind. In the summer, a strong wind can tear off leaves, branches and if the wind is strong, it can uproot the tree. In the winter, this does not happen because without leaves to catch the wind the wind passes through leaving the tree intact. Our buttons are the leaves on our tree. The more buttons we have the greater the chance that what happens to the tree can happen to us. The idea of removing buttons may appear like detachment, but detachment simply moves the tree and makes it susceptible to a different set of concerns. Our leaves must go and we do that by becoming more transparent.

Consider that....

• When we base our opinion of us on what we believe others think of us, we add leaves
• When we have needs that require filling, we add leaves
• When we place value on what has no real value we add leaves
• When we care with conditions, we add leaves
• When we feel regretful, guilty or blame others we add leaves
• When we compare ourselves to others we add leaves
• When we judge others or ourselves, we add leaves
• When we are angry, jealous, full of pride, envy etc. we add leaves

 

 

It is hard not to add leaves, but if we learn to reduce the leaves we have we also find that we are not only adding less, we are taking some away. Our conscious attention is one of the most powerful tools in our mental arsenal and one of the keys to reducing the leaves on our tree. We cannot fix what we do not see, cannot see what we do not notice and it is very difficult to notice something unless we are paying attention to our attention.

 

 

© 2011 Allan Beveridge

Last updated December 17, 2021

 

References:

1. Ex. 2: Improving Our Honesty
2. Intuitive Indulgences