Paying Attention
What we pay attention to and what we do not pay attention to influences how we navigate through life.
Being Awake
To understand this, we need to be awake. We need to be conscious of our thinking, feeling and doing. When we are not conscious, we suffer from doing things in a mechanical manner. Not fully aware of our behaviour. And not making any conscious choices or decisions. Resulting in consequences which we regret. Making us often plead ignorance. “I don’t know how I could have done this” or “I don’t know what came over me”.
As E.F.Schumacher states
“When we are not awake in our attention, we are certainly not self — aware and therefore not fully human; we are likely to act helplessly in accordance with uncontrolled inner drives or outer compulsions.”
We need to become aware of our attention.
Focussed and Diffused Attention
When we focus our attention on anything, we experience its concentrated exclusivity. The tyranny of the eye. Its selectiveness and divisiveness. We notice the ‘separateness’ of things. The figure contrasted with the ground. Like when we concentrate for those few seconds to take a photograph of a person or persons against a background. However when we relax we indulge in diffused attention. Where our attention is dispersed among a plethora of sights and sounds without any strain or stress. Where there is a strong possibility of seeing the ‘whole’, the connectedness, its ‘gestalt’ and unity with all its differences. The figure and ground as one reality. To discover and create our true selves we need both focussed and diffused attention.
By Only Focussing, we Miss Out
In the now famous “invisible gorilla” test where there are two groups of people — some dressed in white, some in black and are passing basketballs around; one is asked to count the number of passes among players dressed in white while ignoring the passes of those in black. It’s difficult to believe how many people miss seeing the person in a gorilla suit walking in and out of the scene thumping his chest. The participants are busy concentrating on counting the number of passes. When our concentration is fixed, we miss out on major aspects of our experience.
This is what led Daniel Simons the cognitive psychologist behind the experiment to say
“…we are aware of far less of our world than we think.”
Misdirecting our Attention
In the same vein we see magicians misdirecting our attention; making us concentrate on actions which serve as a diversion and in that short time when our attention is on something else they make things appear and disappear. Politicians resort to this on a continuous basis. When peoples’ issues are gaining centre stage and creating front page headlines, a significant event is designed to happen so that the embarrassing news gets displaced from the front page. In interviews too politicians misdirect the focus of attention.
As Robert McNamara, secretary of defense to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, said
“Don’t answer the question you were asked. Answer the question you wish you were asked.”
When we see through this misdirection of our attention, the power wielded by magicians and politicians over us diminishes.
Not paying Attention
Sometimes we are motivated not to pay attention. When our need for money is so very great, we tend to fall for ingenious Ponzi schemes made famous by Bernard Madoff. We do not see the fraud. In fact we don’t want to. We want the high returns being promised. We don’t find it ‘too good to be true’. Our positive optimism makes us want to see the world in the way it is portrayed. We want our positive biases to be confirmed. Our attention gets distorted. Being positive is helpful to cope with life but we also need to realise that being positive may create illusions which may deter us from making the right decision and seeing correctly. We need authentic attention. Attention which is always seeking the Truth.
Ultimately we need to pay attention with our whole being. With our minds and hearts. We create our lives through the way we experience our attention. We need to become more mindful.
