Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
– Albert Einstein (maybe)
Hello aware and attentive beings,
All too often meditation is spoken about in really simplistic terms – sometimes too simplistic. An issue I see time and time again is when the distinction between ‘awareness’ and ‘attention’ is not made and a practitioner becomes confuddled (that is to be confused and befuddled simultaneously – a truly terrible condition).
A meditation teacher may say: “Be aware of only the breath.” and this causes a novice meditator to believe that they are a terrible meditator because even though they are paying attention to the breath, they are also aware of their body and outside noises and thoughts and so many other things. And because of a simple lack of clarity in wording, the novice meditator sets themselves an impossible standard which they can’t imagine ever achieving, thus disheartening and demotivating them.
BUT in ‘The Mind Illuminated’ (TMI) a very valuable distinction is parsed between ‘attention’ and ‘awareness’. Whilst awareness covers the totality of what is in consciousness, of which there can be many mind objects within at once; attention is the focal point of your concentration and which only one mind object can occupy at any given instance.
In Ian McGilchrist’s magnum opus ‘The Master and his Emissary’, he speaks of five different types of attention:
1. Sustained Attention – maintaining attention on a given object 2. Focused Attention – precise and detailed observation.
3. Vigilance – on the lookout for what to exclude from your focus.
4. Divided Attention – alternating attention between tasks rapidly.
5. Alertness – wakefulness and intensity.
This Tuesday, we’ll pay attention to these different types of attention and play with some different meditative(.dev) exercises ;).