ATTENTION IS OUR ONLY TOOL
What would happen if we attend fully to creating the new paradigm?
“We cannot know anything without attending to it, and the nature of that attention alters what we find.” -- Ian McGilchrist
The topic of attention is enormous with a limitless possibility of threads; we will explore but a few here.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The power of attention
2. How attention works
3. As sovereign entities, we have a choice
4. Different forms of attention
5. Attention on what is wrong or what is possible
6. How can we use attention in this phase shift?
1. The power of attention
Attention has the power to affect everything. In fact, it is the only tool humans have and it is at our disposal every nanosecond. Our attention is how we interface with the world. It affects every single thing we do, who we are, how we feel, what our connection is with other humans, and how we interact with our tangible and intangible environments. It drives where we put our energy and what we think about and directly affects our well-being. Attention is the one master tool that trumps our entire experience on earth.
As our only tool, where we put our attention is everything. And as humans, we have choice. And yet we haven’t learned that. We can let it get hijacked by advertisements, politics, text messaging, a childhood wound, or the list of “shoulds” we carry with us. We can also purposefully put it on the person in front of us or on sending positive vibes into the meeting room.
Finely-honed attention skills increase choice and therefore possibilities. By selecting to focus on maximizing the good, the true, and the beautiful, what isn’t possible? If attention hygiene is the number one skill in ‘How to Be a Human,’ attending to it may be the most important thing one can do every moment.
2. How attention works
Attention includes but is bigger than mind alone. It is a subset of whole-body awareness.
One could say awareness is the larger context of our humanness, which involves higher and higher forms of consciousness, to include, ultimately, awareness of awareness itself. In that sense, awareness is the wide-angle lens, while attention is the narrow lens, the intentional focus of our awareness.
When I walk into a meeting, I might be aware of many things, such as the atmosphere in the room or my hopes for the meeting’s outcome. As the meeting gets underway, I might put my attention on the powers at play or how people are responding to me. Too many things can dilute our attention and make it more difficult to be fully present. Presence is a function of being fully alert to the context.
Drama, emotion, physical sensation, and, alas, conflict naturally attract our attention. That’s why negative or emotion-laden television sells. The amount of energy involved affects our attraction: the more energy, the greater the pull.
Curiously, things on the edge of our awareness—like that cat that just sped by—also pull us. Our autonomic Neuroception triggers our dorsal and sympathetic instincts for safety but on modest alert can be tantalizing. Something so outrageous that it disturbs our usual way of thinking can attract our attention. Of course, we are also compelled by the familiar but at a certain point, our psyche can get bored and that which is in the margins might gain more attention. Taking huge leaps is harder. I am aware that I am not aware of what is beyond my margins.
Collective density might be another factor that pulls at our attention. That is, the more people around us who are attending to something, the more likely we are to do the same. This is a major factor in social media, as we know. Attention is “now the scarcest and most fervently desired resource,” says Yves Citton[1].
And the quality of attention is also an unquestionable attractant. I can feel the power of someone’s curious and open attention on me as I am speaking, for instance. This kind of full attention opens me further and invites greater sharing. If the attention is on love and interbeing, it breeds love and interbeing; if it is on hate and separation, it breeds hate and separation.
Here, in the Perception arena of our ventral system, is where we have choice. By giving something attention, we are giving it our power. Advertisers certainly understand that, so our attention is monetized for the most dollars.
3. As sovereign entities, we have choice
In the earlier years of the post 911 war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, I was working with a US-based NGO in Logar province. To celebrate a friend’s departure, a group of colleagues—mostly Afghans and a couple of internationals—organized a picnic. We drove out of town and hiked to a flat spot on the side of a steep hill. Being notoriously good at instant picnics, within minutes the Afghans had set out blankets with a feast of lavash and goat, pumpkin, pulao, and hot tea. After the toasts and sad farewells, I invited the hardy to trek up the hillside farther (Afghans like to consider themselves exceptionally tough and capable in the mountains; I like to consider myself the same.).
After confirming there were no residual landmines, a number of us hiked to the top of a rock outcropping overlooking the valley. I sat down next to Mohammed. His English was basic, but enthusiastic and my Pashto and Tajik were worse. He said abruptly, “As a devoted member of the Taliban, I sat in this exact same spot five years ago aiming a rocket propelled grenade at a US military helicopter.”
“Really?” I said. “How did you get from being a devoted member of the Taliban to working with an American NGO on peacebuilding today?” Remarkably, he proceeded to tell me how after that day on this hill, he began to question what was best for his people. Years before, Taliban insurgents had entered his village and convinced him and a few other young men of the importance of jihad to cleanse the corruption of the government. Their powerful words influenced him greatly.
However, once he became a deeply embedded fighter, the more he saw, the more he questioned that the Taliban way would offer the best life for his village. Then someone in his tribe gave him access to a computer. Though he knew nothing about computers, over time he taught himself how to use it and eventually started learning basic English.
In the meantime, he had had many discussions with elders and religious scholars and decided that the tenets of Islam demanded that he do well for his family and that the direction the Taliban was taking them was not going to facilitate that. Although leaving the Taliban was dangerous, with the help of others, he found his way into this NGO and continued to learn and question.
Mohammed’s story is one of clearly deciding to redirect his attention.
Using our sovereignty, we are principally at choice as to what to take in from our environment and what to give out (with obviously innumerable factors affecting it). This starts with being aware of what is in our immediate context—internally and externally. As we consider where to put our attention, we might have supporting values, philosophy, or other means of guidance, or we can ask ourselves questions such as, “Is this meaningful?” or ““What is my soul demanding?” or “Does this contribute to the good, the true, and the beautiful?” What we do with our attention at any moment, then changes the context itself.
4. Different forms of attention
Let’s say there are (at least) three different forms of basic attention: egocentric, allocentric, and collective. The egocentric—self attention—is where we spend the bulk of our time. Some is more background, and some more foreground. My background attention might make me slightly aware of an attitude I am holding or a reminder in the back of my mind to do something. A small element, say in my emotional body, might feel a lingering reaction to some recent news while my physical body might notify me of hunger as my energetic body suggests it is restless.
Our foreground attention is evident when we concentrate on something so hard we lose track of time. Or if something big is at stake—driving on an icy road, for example—we tend to focus intently. Focused attention can lead to the flow state in which we are wholly consumed by our context. Deep creativity can result in that kind of timeless rapture. And our attention can also change in a second.
When my thoughts are on my reaction to my colleague’s anger at me, my Neuroception flight or fight kicks in and my attention is on what I need to do to “survive.” Clearly egocentric. When I am learning how to repair a chainsaw, I am similarly focused on my own interest.
Allocentric, in contrast, is putting one’s attention outside of oneself, possibly combining with other people’s attention. This could be when I meet with a group to organize an activity and we place our joint attention on the task at hand. It could also be sensing into group intersubjective awareness or losing myself in nature. We-space groups engage this form of combined, allocentric attention. Collective attention, on the other hand, is society’s aggregate focus where culture and polity sway where we put our attention. If I am absorbed in the recent US presidential debate, I am contributing to the collective attention.
There is no hierarchy or ‘better than’ in these forms; they simply are used in different ways. We no doubt can hold more than one form of attention at once (the egocentric is likely a subtext in nearly all our waking hours). Power lies in our awareness of our options.
Self-attention has been highly developed in our western culture over the last century and exponentially in recent decades. The individual reigns supreme and we are expected to prioritize our attention on our own desires, our personality, and our needs. As we know, technology has dramatically affected how we spend our time and uniquely challenges our sovereignty over our individual attention. We even have titles for people whose job it is to capture our individual attention to have a collective impact, that is, to gain power over the culture: social influencers.
Allocentric attention is generally less developed. Putting our attention outside of the individual self requires a distinct set of skills—whether it is alone, in a group, or simply in life. It opens different possibilities. When we put our combined attention on the shared space, it has enormous potential for new illumination on things like the quality of the space between us or mutual awareness.
This requires letting go of identifying reality as something only we personally are reacting to or interpreting from the separate self. It involves a very subtle sensing and listening to what the space around us is saying and what is possible. Skills building in this realm improves our attention capacity as a foundation for groups. It requires individual attentiveness but shifts us from our self-focused experience to allow us to be a part of something beyond the separation. Eugene Gendlin said, “I think the new product is called ‘interhuman attention.’”[2] When we combine our attention, we become a part of a larger creative calling. Similarly, allocentric attention in environments removed from direct interface with other humans holds enormous potential for connecting to something greater. This can be in nature, in crowds, in meditation… It is allowing our attention to broaden beyond the “I” into the space beyond, no matter the space.
Collective attention, alternatively, is the arena of culture, society, and social norms. These are the tides that come in and out with politics, trends, social attention, all forms of media, advertisement, and public appeal. The more individual attention we surrender to collective attention capture, the bigger it grows. Peter Barus describes the current era as the Attention Age where access to collective attention is now the route to power, like gold used to be. “…it now takes aggregated attention for any idea to gain currency and become an effective force for good.”[3]
Being entirely sovereign in our collective attention is no doubt impossible, especially today with the myriad forms of attraction. And, in any case, we are a social species susceptible to the influences around us. Yet being as aware of, and selective in, what the collective milieu is demanding of our attention is crucial. And what is possible were we to put our collective attention to use to shape our culture, politics, and social trends?
So, the question is, acknowledging that we have but one tool, what do we do with it? Some focus on the personal, on what is happening inside us is requisite to function as a healthy, free being with choice. At the same time, including and transcending the individual and opening our attention to the world beyond unlocks enormous potential.
Broad spectrum awareness of not only our collective space, but what lies beyond allows us to choose where to put our focused attention. Acknowledging the wider field extends possibilities into yet untapped arenas within the still unknown. When we actively choose to shine a light on something by putting our attention on it, it grows. The power of attention is enormous, especially when compounded. Imagine what could happen if we were to contribute collectively to the ‘fund of goodwill’?
5. Attention on what is wrong or what is possible
Where attention goes, the energy flows. Problems, wounds, and discord do require attention to integrate and heal. However, the negative discourse of our society has accustomed us to dwell on what is wrong. This is as obvious with the culture wars as it is with our psychology. The media perhaps takes the cake with its constant barrage of suffering and horrors, to which we are attracted. On a personal level, we have learned that none of us is ok, as we have any number of diagnoses of what is wrong with us. We are reminded daily by advertisers that we are not good enough and that something is missing. Through all of this, we are constantly giving our attention to—and thus reinforcing—the old story that life is difficult, dangerous, and merciless. This nonstop negative energy causes us to spiral down into a self-constructed death trap through over consumption, never-ending growth, game theory, and separation from nature.
But wait! Let’s remember that we can be sovereign over our attention. We have the ability to put it where it does good, to heal, and to make changes. And we can choose to no longer put it where it no longer serves. I’m reminded of Caroline Myss’s “woundology” where we are stuck in the habit of being wounded.
Discernment is key here to distinguish between that which really requires our attention—integrating shadow, addressing long festering trauma, righting wrongs—and that which is a drag on our vitality—continually deriding ourselves for not being good enough, for example. This requires a delicate refinement of acuity and ultimately allows us to take the most advantage of our most precious resource: our attention. As we turn it increasingly towards the light and joy, healing work takes its rightful place and draws our attention when it is needed. At times (which could be significant for some) it may take our full focus. However, as we become more aware of how our energy follows our attention, we are better able to let go of that which no longer serves and turn towards our calling and our greater potential, the light on the horizon. This isn’t about bypassing or ignoring what has hurt us or what is occurring; it’s about selecting narratives with intention. Letting go of and not buying into that which undermines our goodness and potential has enormous power to transform our reality and our future.
So, in choosing to use our attention for our own and the greater good, what do we want to grow under the light of possibility? What exciting potential wants cultivating?
6. How can we use attention in this phase shift?
We are in a time between worlds, being torn apart by one and drawn to another. These are times that demand us to focus intently on where we are going. How do we use our one tool in this phase shift to put energy towards a better planet? At the personal level, I feel that hyper awareness telling me to streamline, to purge that which I’ve carried but no longer serves me, and to turn fully to that which is calling.
At the collective level, there is a growing awareness of the old story and how it commandeers our attention to the unhealthy. Our misdirected interests have lead us to the brink of our demise; the facades and deceptions are becoming more and more evident. This is good news!
Simultaneously, the inkling of a new paradigm is emerging. This is even better news! The evolutionary impulse is giving us glimpses of a universal collective that truly serves humanity and the planet. When we lift our heads up from our personal song, we can hear a much larger chorus. It is beautiful and it demands our devotion. As we add our voices, the volume grows.
In support of this transition, we need to intentionally turn away from our hyper focus on our personal experience and away from our over fixation on our problems—again, not eliminating them altogether, just growing bigger and putting our energy towards what we want to cultivate. So, instead, we intentionally turn towards our interbeing and towards the potential for a positive, collective future. This is not just for survival; it is in response to this growing, fresh energy that is so alive with possibilities and beckoning us to create in whole new ways.
As we individually and jointly learn greater attention hygiene, more and more options become available. What can happen when all eight billion of us focus our only tool, our attention, on a brilliant, thriving future?
[1] Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, p. 8
[2] The Town and Human Attention, Eugene Gendlin https://focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2180.html
[3] https://attentionage.com/2019/03/13/the-new-macguffin/
Want to dialogue? Write me at kimmaynard@substack.com