I’vefound in talking to people that the distinction between attention and consciousness is still not clear, so perhaps it’s a good time look at both of them.
Attention holds a specific energy in a fixed field around something that we want to observe or examine. For instance you can put your attention on your hands, or you can give you attention to your thoughts or to someone you are talking to.
Consciousness requires an ability to focus a similar energy around the body in a less directed way. This energy creates a field, which can be added to or can built up over time. From one point view being present and self-remembering method of focusing and building up a field of consciousness around the body.
Holding attention and being present can be seen as sister talents. They need a similar effort and they help each other. The more conscious you are, the easier it is to be attentive, the more attentive you are, the easier it is to be conscious. By bringing attention to your sensations, your movements, your emotions, and your thoughts, you become present to your inner world and external manifestations.
What is generally not understood about the effort to focus attention is that it saves energy. As an experiment when you finish reading this article, get up and do something. It doesn’t matter what. Make yourself a snack or cup of coffee, or straighten something. But whatever you do, be attentive to your external movements. Observe the way you move and how your muscles become tense when you hold something and how they relax when you set it down. Observe how you stand and how much force you use when you open and close a drawer or a cabinet. Don’t worry about being present because you’re holding yourself in the present by focusing your attention on your movements as you make them.
If you do this experiment, you will probably observe that, with attention, your movements are more deliberate. You use only the force that you need for each movement and are less subject to unobserved tensions. In other words you will save energy. It is true that you will need a certain amount of energy to keep your attention on what you’re doing, but the energy you need to hold your attention is far less than the energy you waste in tension and unintended movements.
It isn’t the effort to be attentive that makes you feel tired. Think about this way: each time you have a thought or make a movement or express an emotion, wheels turn inside you. The more the wheels turn the more energy you use. Each function has its own energy, and the energy of one function cannot be substituted for the energy of another function. You cannot think with the energy of the body and you cannot move, or dance, or drive a car with the energy of the mind. Let’s say that you have to study some material or write a paper or a report. The mind has only a definite amount of energy. When you reach the end of that energy, you feel tired. You can stare at the computer screen as long as you like; if the mind has no energy, you cannot work. But if you get up and take a walk and don’t think, you will find that you can return to your work. By letting the body walk, you will be using another function, and, at the same time, allowing the mind to refresh itself. So when you come back to the computer, you will be able to study again.
Energy is the mechanical side of consciousness. You need a certain amount of energy for living and a certain amount for being present. The way to get more energy for being present is through the use of attention, attention in relation to the expression of the body’s desires, in relation to which emotions you express, and in relation to which thoughts you allow.
Is holding attention and being present the same as self-remembering? If not, what is the difference?
They are all important efforts, but they are not quite the same. Holding attention is different than being present and self-remembering in that it doesn’t necessarily contain a sense of divided attention. You can, for instance, hold your attention on your hands without having a sense of yourself in the room where you sit. Attention can also be held, as it is when you watch a movie or read a book that you particularly like.
Being present and self-remembering should always contain a sense of ‘I am here in this place.’ You observe yourself, but you also observe the moment or the place where you happen to be. They are essentially the same effort, only the emphasis is different. In self-remembering the emphasis is on remembering, you are remembering to make the effort to create the self. In being present the emphasis is on staying in the moment. Put simply being present is an effort to observe yourself in the passing moment.
I hope this is clear. We have different efforts because some efforts work better than others in certain situations. There are other efforts as well. For instance we can ‘separate.’ To separate means that we separate our self from a situation. So again we have the idea of divided attention. You realize: here is my self and this is the situation. In general we usually think about being present to pleasant situations. You would want, for instance, to be present to sitting in a garden or looking at a beautiful painting. On the other hand you would want to separate from a headache. In practice there is no reason why you couldn’t be present to a headache or separate from sitting in a garden. It’s just easier to think about removing our self from painful situations and being present to something beautiful.
This a great question. Just remember that any effort that creates consciousness needs to contain divided attention. You want to realize ‘I am here in this place.’
focused attention can be seen as a torchlight being focused on the pre-selected impressions, whilst consciousness is the “screen” on which those impressions fall…Absent focused attention, impressions are selected according to one’s habitual patterns or the exigencies of the circumstances, such as when one is in pain, or is faced with an emergency.
Huuu, You describe it very well.