At the end of my previous post on going beyond words, I mentioned that I would be writing further about the different kinds of knowledge that emerge out of nonverbal experience: intuition, instinct, and somatic intelligence, among others. But before I go there, I want to point out that there is an intermediate step that is needed in order to access those different kinds of knowledge. This post will be about attention—that most basic and magical of faculties which determines so much of our experience and quality of life. If we’re interested in going beyond words into direct experience, attention is the bridge that gets us there. It is the connection between the appearance of things in the here and now (immanence) and their deeper essence and meaning (transcendence).
what
The English word attention comes from the Latin root tendere, which also gives us words like tender, and to tend. Tending to something means giving it care and gentle presence in order that it may grow and flourish. We tend (or attend) in this way to animals, plants, and small children—but we can extend the same quality of attention to basically anything we want, including ourselves, and the results are the same.
It is a well-known maxim in yoga and energy circles that attention is healing, or can be, if you know how to attend. The common refrain is that energy flows where attention goes, and vice versa. This is not an abstract, woo-woo concept but a tangible reality.1 The things that we give our attention to, whether internally or externally, are brought to life and gain in importance; while what we dismiss or disregard shrinks in value and eventually withers away. Whether aware of it or not, we are constantly making choices about what to attend to, and therefore about what to invest in and support on the one hand, and what to let go of on the other. When this choice is driven by impulse, addiction or manipulation (as it is so often), we feel a sense of absurd helplessness, because the contents of mind are so intimate and, at the same time, so vulnerable to external forces.
Our world increasingly functions as an attention economy. The qualitative value of attention has been converted into quantity: numbers, statistics and eventually money. What matters in such a world is not how a person attends to your words or your image but instead how many people attend to them. It goes without saying that there is no real connection in this approach, and scarce possibilities for transformation.
It is difficult to grasp how pervasive the quantitative ideology and model really are. It certainly goes much deeper than most of us realize. Perhaps I could even go so far as to say that pretty much everything that is presented to you non-organically (meaning via technology or algorithm) has some degree of quantitative manipulation nested within it. It wants you to be stimulated in a certain way so you don’t stop looking at it, it wants you to share your clickbaited outrage with another person, or, most commonly, it wants you to just buy the thing already.
Contrast this to the unique sense of serendipity that arises when you receive something from the world ‘directly’: like seeing something on the street that makes you stop and stare, or hearing about something from a friend that lights up your heart. I recently drew a fortune cookie message that perfectly spoke to a theme that is on my mind, so perfectly that for a few moments I just stood there with the little slip of paper in my hand, unable to believe what I was reading (also because my friend drew the same message only moments afterward, which is rare). The feeling of that moment—a kind of tender awe combined with the desire to laugh out loud—is still with me, days later. I know that I could only receive such a message because I was in some way open to it, my attention having been sufficiently trained to turn towards certain things and away from others.
One of my teachers used to say that the entirety of spiritual wisdom could be summed up in the teaching: know what to give up and what to take up. When you attend to something, you are taking it up, or into, yourself; giving it permission to be part of you, to grow more closely into your life, to shape who you are becoming in deep yet subtle ways. When you give something up, you are separating from it in some way, creating space between yourself and it so that it can either fall away or take on a different form elsewhere. Another word for this skill is discernment. Discernment is also bound up with the skill of establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries. Who, or what, are you letting in, and why? Who, or what, are you keeping out, and why?
how
Attention is the quintessential soft skill, and the main tool of mind training. It is difficult to capture the qualities of attention we’re training in words (especially English ones), yet they can be taught and experienced through feeling, presence and a little bit of technique. Meditation is essentially about how you attend to things—the technique part. But beyond formal practice, you can learn to attend to anything you want to, and as long as you’re consistent, your mind will be transformed. People who know this intimately include musicians, artists and creators of all kinds, parents and caregivers, podcasters and good conversationalists, connoisseurs of anything, scientists and explorers, sportspeople and their coaches, nature lovers… you get the idea. Anyone who has a passion for something or is interested in depth will know what I’m talking about.
modes of seeing
Because humans are so visually-dominant, I find the gateway of the eyes to be the easiest place to start working with attention. We are immediately and often intensely impacted by what we see. Unlike with hearing, which is both constant and immersive, with seeing (as with attending), we have choices: to look or not look, to have the eyes open or closed, focused or unfocused, here or there.2
Think of the way that you look at your computer, versus the way you look at something or someone you cherish. Each of these visual modes reflects a different quality of attention. The former is more focused, direct, laser-like, narrow, exclusive; the latter more expansive, soft, open, restful. These are not only modes of seeing but modes of attending, and we are already training in them all the time. You may have noticed that when you spend the day staring at a screen, mind and body feel stuck, dense, heavy or frozen afterwards.
When I was first learning to drive, I used to unconsciously freeze my eyes straight ahead of me and dart them side-to-side in order to look around. After the first few lessons, my neck and shoulders would feel like frozen blocks of ice for a few hours, until I subconsciously relaxed out of it. This happened a few times until I realised I had to retrain myself somehow. I started to observe drivers that looked like they were having a good time—all the friendly cabbies in the town I was living in—and how they maintained their carriage. In the end I realised it came from the way they were attending to the road: a broad, receptive field of vision; soft neck and shoulders that allowed them to look around, chat with me, and hold the wheel and the gearstick lightly; and a relaxed body to transmit just the right amount of power through the legs into the pedals.3 I couldn’t replicate their poise just by telling myself to relax or trying to copy their movements. I had to actually change the way I was looking at the world outside the car. This idea holds no matter the context, because we’re always using our eyes, and they determine so much of the quality of our awareness.
In yoga we have the practice of drishti, or soft yet focused gazing, which is used to gently gather and unify the consciousness of the practitioner. As with many yogic practices, drishti is about balancing direct focus and open awareness in one moment. It generates a feeling of stability and receptivity at the same time. Explanation here.
Another vision-based practice I use to train my attention is gazing, sometimes called beholding, or blessing with the eyes. This one happens spontaneously when we see something beautiful and are able to look upon it without ‘grabbing’. The eyes drink in the view with appreciation, and the mind and heart soften into gratitude and delight. (A grabby gaze, on the other hand, feels sticky and heavy, because the force of desire isn’t leaving enough space between observer and observed.) I find that when I am aware of the transience of whatever I’m looking at, it becomes infinitely more precious and my gaze reflects both my admiration and my awareness. Gazing can also be done with a partner, as in the mystical Sufi practice, but—fair warning—it is very intimate and highly transformative. Partner gazing is something that happens spontaneously between infants and caregivers, as part of the natural bonding process, so if you’ve ever had a child you may already know what it feels like.
There are, of course, numerous other pathways to train and cultivate attention. Many of them are sensory in nature, because we humans are so exquisitely attuned to our senses and the environment around us. When it comes to attention training, begin with the easiest and most delightful things, and then let the quality of mind they evoke seep out and soak into everything else.
why
I want to end with some thoughts on why attention matters. As I said above, attention is the direct link between how things appear and what they truly are. You can’t understand the essence of anything without paying sufficient attention to it; meanwhile, the more you attend, the closer you get to the essence of a thing.
Attention is also the main point of connection between us and the world. It is where individual and cosmos meet. We shape the world we perceive through the way we direct our attention (and whatever we attend to shapes us in return). In spiritual circles this notion is variously called resonance, coherence, the power of intention, manifestation, attraction etc. The degree to which our perceptions influence reality is debatable; but training your attention makes you more sensitive to this process and attunes you to the ongoing feedback loop between self and world.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
—Paradise Lost, I.254-5, John Milton
As far as I know, humans are the only beings capable of exercising choice in what we attend to, and therefore of affecting conscious change in the world. This kind of change doesn’t begin with action but with perception. Attention changes perception, which then changes behavior.
At the moment we are operating under the paradigm that more knowledge—especially of the data kind—is what is needed to create change. However, in truth it is not knowledge that drives change, but perception. To put it simply, when you change the way you perceive something, you will automatically change how you act towards it. The shift from intellectual knowledge to direct perception moves us from a mind-dominated worldview into the heart and body, or from the left brain hemisphere into the right. Such a shift requires trusting in other, softer forms of knowledge, which do not fit into neat guidelines or reveal themselves linearly to us. (More on these in the next post).
As many wise people have said: your mind is the only thing truly under your control—and it is therefore your truest responsibility. I can’t overstate the impact that this view has on my quality of life, and state of mind. I find myself discovering it over and over again, through the most everyday of choices. What is it that clears the fog from my mind, and allows me to be present and here in the whole of this moment? Turn towards that. What is it that creates angst and turbulence inside me, that leaves me unable to settle and itching to jump out of my own skin? Turn away from that if you can. If not, train your awareness to loosen around it just enough that you can remain spacious and at ease. Failing that, support yourself through the agitation with gentle presence. Like all living processes, you will eventually and naturally return to equilibrium.
Ultimately we are always making choices about what to attend to and what to disregard. These choices are necessary for both our survival and our sanity, but it is worth remembering the depth of their impact. What we attend to affects us, whether we acknowledge it or not, and that effect is cumulative. What we turn away from also affects us, by virtue of its absence. My meditation teacher used to say that what you exclude cannot be healed or integrated. In this sense, attention is a gift—and a form of power—that we need to use responsibly. I leave you with a quote from the Upanishads which speaks of desire (that which draws attention) as the primordial force driving creation:
You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
—Brihadarankaya Upanishad, 4.5, trans. Eknath Easwaran
Thank you for attending to these words. I hope they’ve given you some inspiration and clarity about what you’re choosing to attend to in your life. In the next post, I will map out a few different kinds of knowledge that arise from attentional training—intuition, insight, instinct, bodily intelligence, and more.
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And if you feel moved to, please share in the comments something that you’re enjoying attending to recently…
In quantum mechanics, this principle is known as the observer effect. A short and sweet explanation of this effect, including how it connects to the Vedic philosophy of consciousness, can be found here. Another relevant idea from quantum mechanics is that of entanglement—the principle that two particles, once connected, are always bonded and responsive to each other, no matter the distance between them. This video explains entanglement in more detail and with some beautifully thought-provoking images.
It is of course possible to train our listening attention to tune into certain things and tune out of certain things. Music lovers know this, and in fact, it has been sound that brought me to a more refined understanding of attention. But I chose to start with vision here because the parallels are more obvious and easier to describe.
For simple pointers on how to reclaim your poise (ie. practice good posture) while driving, see this video from an Alexander Technique practitioner.
I loved this, thank you. As I finished reading, I noticed an impulse to share a couple of related practices that I like to explore that bring me into clearer attention - I hope this is ok. The first is seeing from behind the eyes, which for me softens focus and diminishes the sense and effort of reaching with my eyes or the grabbing that you speak about, and the second a sort of Goethean approach to seeing when I am in nature, for example, in the act of seeing a tree I recognise the tree as simultaneously seeing me which seems to shift the whole subject/object relationship into something mutually participative (and for me this also changes the felt-sense of time and being) Again, thank you so much for sharing. 🙏
Thank you for this post on the very important practice of attention. “Seeing from behind the eyes”is how I practice drishti; or looking out while also looking inward. It helps me soften the tension of the self grabbing, to become one with the Self.