A Revolution in Attention

May 26, 2009 at 12:16 am · Filed under attention, focus, goals, meditation, mindfulness, self development, self mastery, stress reduction, the mind

Its clear to anyone who doesn’t live in a cave that there are many problems in the world right now. There’s children starving in countries gripped with war and conflict. There are incurable diseases, terrorist attacks, people losing jobs, and fat cats laughing all the way to the bank with their hard stolen money. There are so many people working on the ground level to deal with these kinds of things but as with all complicated problems, not only do we need to catch the water dripping from the leak… we need to patch the roof.

I was recently read a post by Jonathan Mead at Illuminated Mind about starting revolutions and it got me thinking… if I was to start a revolution what do I honestly care about enough to devote myself to it.

The idea of finding what your passionate about through the lens of what you would be willing to start a revolution for strikes me as a powerful tool for any person trying to find fulfillment in their life.

What in the world means so much to me, what am I so deeply committed to that I would be willing to wake up early every morning and go to bed late every night. What do I love so much that I would answer email, hand out fliers, spread information with all the passionate frenzy that makes up the life of a revolutionary?

There are so many injustices and things in the world that I feel passionate about, so many political situations, so many people suffering who I want to help but then I have to ask myself… Whats the most I can do for these people utilizing the skills I have and the things that I know I’ll be able to wake up and give 100 percent to for as long as it takes?

Sure, I could sign up and volunteer for an organization that moves food to the third world. I could even just go and volunteer for the local Food Not Bombs group in my town and feed the hungry here. These are great ideas, necessary ideas, but what about something a little more abstract. These kinds of activities are curative… what could I start a revolution in that was preventative.

I slept on it the other night, focusing on the question before I went to sleep, ‘what am I passionate about that I could devote my life to it?’ and some point in the next morning I had my answer.

The thing I care about the most, the very activity that lies at the root of all misunderstandings is the human race’s inability to pay attention. I want to start a Revolution in Attention.

Now I know that kind of answer might seem too simple for a lot of people. I don’t mean to imply that paying attention will cure all our ails but lets stop and think about what our lack of awareness about the world and the people around us has brought us to.

Awareness Test-Amazing – Click here for the most popular videos

Daniel Goleman writes about a form of intelligence he calls ‘Emotional Intelligence’ as opposed to the more cerebral left brained sort of mind we usually associate with problem-solving and remembering information. What this means is that some people are better than others at processing data but might not be as developed in other areas like controlling and dealing with their emotions and the emotions of those around them.

Now I don’t want to fall off topic and get into exploring the specific ins and outs of Goleman’s philosophy which is already written about ad infinitum in other blog posts and articles all over the web. I only bring it up because I want to touch on the fact that I personally believe emotional intelligence is the outcome of practicing the simple act of paying attention.

While the role genetics plays can’t be left out, the amount of emotional awareness a person will have about herself and the people around her will be dramatically increased when she makes paying attention, rather than living in her own head, a priority.

When we stop to look around us, at the people, at the environment, at the technology… it’s impossible to not care. Its really even more than just mindfulness I’m talking about here. I’m talking about simple understanding in an intellectual sense too. Do you know the name of that person you pass in the hall at work every day? Do you know what’s two blocks south running parallel to the street you drive down every single day? How often do you just look around and explore… just for the hell of it?

This week, find some time to explore the things you already think your familiar with. Explore the people, places, things… just for the child-like enjoyment of knowing. Take a walk somewhere you haven’t been, maybe even start a conversation with a stranger you always ride the bus with because *gasp* it’s allowed and you might even end up having a great experience. Really start to pay attention, not only to your feelings and your own thoughts, but to the subtle expressions and cycles going on all around you.

That’s my revolution, which in a sense I’m already working on right now. Its a revolution that’s been going on for thousands of years really, maybe even more, ever since the first proto-human began living more in his own thoughts, fantasies, and fears than the rich green living world around him. Perhaps my revolution isn’t even a revolution at all in the usual sense. We aren’t taking to the streets, we aren’t marching with picket signs past the white house. My revolution doesn’t make much noise Its coming quieter than that. My revolution is about looking around you, looking inside of yourself and taking the time to notice what life is really like… then making the decision to act. Who knows… maybe you’ve passed the person who will change your life a thousand times already… but you’ve been too inside your own head to say ‘Hi.’

More words on the web bout’ this kind of thing:
The Nature of Emotions
Goleman’s Book Emotional Intelligence
The Attentional Spotlight An interesting post that taught me a lot about the interaction between our physical senses and our sense of ‘attention’.

-Chris
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The Secularization of Meditation

April 15, 2009 at 12:04 pm · Filed under meditation

Is meditation a fundamentally religious idea? Is it possible to separate the psychological elements of buddhism from the dogmatic ones? These are important questions we were asking ourselves when we began putting together the Focused Awareness Technique. We decided it was a clear goal right from the start to limit our techniques to mindfulness based psychological exercises, without unloading any religious or spiritual claims on the student. Is this a good approach? or does divorcing the notion of mindfulness from the carefully constructed metaphysics and ethics found in buddhist scripture devalue the practice?

In this post I want to open up the topic of secular meditation. I know the practice of teaching mindfulness without any of the additional teachings from buddhism is a widely understood and appreciated perspective. Allowing people who otherwise would not have been interested in the cultural aspects or the specific dogmas of buddhism the opportunity to benefit from its core teaching, which is merely being present and embodied in this moment.

First though, let me tell you about my Dad. is a little older than fifty, high blood pressure, smoker, probably not the greatest diet and exercise either, so I recommended he sit down twice a day and start a formal meditation practice, alongside some cardiovascular exercise his doctor recommended.

‘I don’t wanna meditate, thats a new agey thing’ was the stock reply
and it occured to me that a great many people don’t practice the positive secular non-religious/cultural aspects of meditation, because it has such a loaded cultural history.

This got me seriously thinking about the secularization of meditation and whether or not I really wanted to continue in the direction I was going of teaching meditation in settings that rarely came without the trappings of spirituality.

After I explained to my dad that mindfulness practice was no different from learning to pay attention to your body and the moment in a certain kind of focused away, he had no trouble understanding its practical value. When people stop thinking of mindfulness as a ‘type of Buddhist or Hindu practice’ and realize that its simply the act of coming back to our senses as Jon Kabat-Zinn would say. Training our mind to refocus on this moment of our life, this opportunity for action, is fundamentally no different that training a muscle to lift heavier weights, or a runner training to run a faster mile.

Mindfulness training is certainly a part of buddhist and hindu, as well as a variety of other contemplative spiritual traditions but its strength I feel really lies in its secularization and adoption by plain old joe shmoe corporate suit. Or the practical use of mindfulness as demonstrated by a quarterback who keeps his mind focused in the middle of a hectic game and delivers his throw right into the waiting hands of his team mate through all the chaos.

When we begin to view mindfulness as somehow outside the domain of every day life and elevate it to the level of ’something special’ we’re already getting into a new kind of spiritual materialism as Trungpa Rinpoche would call it. By learning to focus on the moment for pragmatic reasons we let the spiritual dimensions reveal themselves in their own time, without lust for some kind of fancy new spiritual state.
The Focused Awareness Technique neither endorses nor denies the metaphysical aspects of the ancient and modern contemplative traditions. We only assert that all too often packaging something as simple as mindfulness with the elaborate truth claims of the wisdom traditions causes too many potential buddhas to throw the baby out with the bath water.

-Chris

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Life on Auto-Pilot

April 7, 2009 at 11:00 am · Filed under attention, focus, mindfulness, self development

Sometimes it happens when you are driving. It can strike at work or in the home. Auto-pilot. Youíve been on the highway for some time, the radio has been playing a steady stream of familiar songs and by the time you get to work, or where ever you are going, you have not experienced the event, rather played it through by reflex. At work we are sometimes thankful for mindless periods when we can work from rote doing our jobs with our experience somewhere else, or nowhere at all. Where did we go? It is argued by D.M. Armstrong, J Levine, P. Carruthers, and other twentieth century philosopher of the mind, that our higher-order perceptions shut off and we stop perceiving our experience.

In Loneliness of the Long Distance Truck Driver, by William G. Lycan & Zena Ryder, it is shown that instead it is only our awareness of our higher perceptions that is switched off. The capacity for consciousness and abstract thought is too hard wired to be turned off, continuing in the background even when we donít notice it. If it is ongoing, innate, in-stifleable tuning it out, going into auto-pilot, is time that our brain has the capacity for incredible abstract meanderings that go tragically unobserved. We can use this time, be aware, and mindful of our own inner states.

One great way to remind ourselves that the journey of life is made up of individual steps is Buddhist Walking Meditation. I find walking meditation, as opposed to sitting allows a rhythm to breath along with when concentration is difficult. Slowing the pace of the walk and meandering aimlessly allows the mind to relax while focusing on the journey and not the destination. For those of you new to mindful meditation walking has a naturally calming effect that makes the transition into a relaxed fully aware state simple to achieve. Check out this easy walking meditation instruction by Howcast.

Matt

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