The Belief That Thinking Requires Effort
La creencia de que pensar requiere esfuerzo
A question about the nature of attention, how experience shifts between foreground and background, and the discovery that effortful thinking is far less necessary than we assume.
The Belief That Thinking Requires Effort
A question about the nature of attention, how experience shifts between foreground and background, and the discovery that effortful thinking is far less necessary than we assume.
It goes where it wants. It's like different shades of experience, all sensational. It just goes wherever it wants. So it feels like I don't really know what attention even is, because before, attention was something that was my attention, me. So it doesn't even feel like attention anymore. Maybe this is just semantics now. It doesn't feel like I know what attention is. Sometimes I get stuck here, as "me with my attention," but generally it just feels like experience is this, and then this, and then this, and there's no attention. I saw an interview a while ago with someone talking about their realization regarding attention, and it really caught my curiosity. She was saying she recognized that attention was a thought. That's been on the back of my mind for a while, what she meant by that. I wonder if that's what it is: that attention isn't really a thing as such.
The part of it that is a thought is the construct "I am choosing to focus on this," or "I am focusing on this or that." That is a thought. What actually happens is the mind shifts what comes into foreground and background.
How do you mean foreground and background?
The kaleidoscope of foreground and background
That's the kaleidoscope. If I say "circle," what comes to the foreground of your experience? Possibly what comes to the foreground is the image of a circle, the concept "circle." That's the foreground. Now, there could also be, as there is here, the background rumbling of traffic. But if I say "background rumbling of traffic," your attention goes to it, and the rumbling of traffic moves from background to foreground.
It's like it's not even there when you're not looking at it.
True, yes, that's the thing. It's always there; it's just not there in the foreground. It's being perceived, but because it's in the background, it's not being cognitively recognized. It's there. It's happening. And because of a lot of thought interference and a lot of focus on interpretation, the raw perception and sensation become so much in the background, and mental activity becomes so much in the foreground, that it appears as though the raw sensation and perception disappear. But they never do.
Then there's a place where there's just that raw sensation. It must be quite overwhelming to go there.
When raw sensation moves to the foreground
It is at first, because the body-mind can get overwhelmed with the intensity of information. It is literally electricity moving through the body, through the nervous system. The focus on thought keeps the raw sensation and perception dim. But as we do this work and stop focusing on thought, the only place for attention to go is there.
Let's put it this way. If 90% of the foreground experience is mind, interpretation, mind map, verbal activity, inner dialogue, then there's very little room for raw sensation and perception. It's going to be very dim in the background. Now, if through a process of meditation and awakening I no longer put 90% of attention on mind, if all of that mental interpretive activity slows down to 10% or 5%, then what used to be this very dim background of raw sensation and perception becomes 95% of experience.
Which is still a kind of shifting of attention inside that box.
As we talk about this, you're probably going to recognize things pretty quickly. You might notice this in your experience quite easily. It's not a far-away thing. In fact, when we sit to meditate, you know that moment where you realize you've been completely immersed in thought and you snap out of it? That's a very common experience when beginning or continuing to meditate. That shift is a shift where thought activity was in the foreground, and suddenly raw perception and sensation move into the foreground to a larger degree. That feels freeing, like a relief from being contracted. All that is, is the shift toward reality and toward what is naturally here: first, raw sensation and perception; second, mental interpretation. You first need the raw sensation and perception in order to think about it and interpret it.
So interpretation is needed sometimes, but not as much as we use it.
The bicycle metaphor
It's always functionally needed, but a lot less than you would think. A really good metaphor is riding a bicycle. At first it could take you a few weeks, and you're thinking about every limb, every bit of balance, every movement. Then at some point you can ride a bicycle with absolute zero foreground focus on the required movements. Something very dim in the background, a very subtle mental process, is active and doing the cycling. Same with walking. But when we are identified and attached to the idea of the separate self, everything seems like an effort, like "I'm doing this." That belief can be gone, and all of the doing can be exactly the same, without effort.
Effort snowballing into tension
That's something I've noticed more recently. With meditation, there used to be a lot more effort, like moving the attention consciously to certain areas of the body. That doesn't feel so necessary or attractive anymore. But also in everyday life, even the smallest bit of effort or intention to do something feels like it brings tension to the body. It's not necessarily a strong tension, but it can snowball without me catching it, because it can start very subtly. It's like when there's something I need to do: "I must do this." It got quite intense yesterday, actually. It really snowballed into tension and effort. I guess it's just a reminder that it's not necessary.
Yes, that's why I'm saying this. There are different depths of false belief. The root of it is the separate self, but there's a less deep false belief that is still important to see: the belief that I need to think about things very intently and intensely to choose and do things, that there needs to be a lot of mental activity in order to function. It's quite shocking to see the extreme to which that is not needed, compared to what was believed.
That sounds like a relief.
Even doing high-level thinking can feel like riding a bicycle, where there isn't a lot of effort. In fact, it's well known that all the big breakthroughs in invention, innovation, and the human genius mind happened effortlessly: on a walk in a garden, or in a bath. So then what else is needed? If inventing quantum physics can be pretty effortless, what else needs more effort than that? Does deciding whether to shower or go out the door without a shower really require that much mental strain? I'm making fun of the kinds of things that minds get hooked on.
That feels like it's rooted in the fear of letting go, of stepping into the unknown and not having control.
It is that, but ultimately it is the attachment to the sense of self, to a belief in a separate self. If you're seeing that, you're actually not doing any of it. You're able to let it go.