Thoughts on Focus
Our internal focus filters the reality we experience. And a natural way to enhance the quality of our focus.
SUMMARY
Where our focus resides, evolves to become our reality
Our reality with others is only shared as much as our individual foci are woven together
Focus oscillates, constantly
Our brain in singular focus mode is associated with our brain in survival mode
Heighten focus through play
It may seem awkwardly simply to state: our focus is our reality. Yet, this astonishing statement is proven true in every moment of our lives. For reality happens in this moment, and with all that may be arising and ceasing in the world around us, and in our minds, those aspects where our focus resides also become our reality.
In some ways, we all experience a shared reality on this Earth. We see sky, we see land, we see flora and fauna. We feel things. And while we are all a part of aspects of this world, in truth, our reality is only shared as much as our individual foci are woven together.
To take an extreme scenario: the multi-billionaire who works atop a 50-story tower, resides in a gated mansion, and moves from place to place either by chauffeured car, helicopter or private plane, experiences a truly distinct universe to the tribal man who sleeps under a shelter made of mud and wood, roams the forest daily on foot, and whose sole “work” is to forage for food and (plant) medicine for himself, his family, and the broader tribe. They may as well be living on different planets, so divergent is their outer reality.
And how to even being to speak of our inner reality? For you and I, we may be in the same room, standing face to face, both with delicately upturned lips, attentive eyes, and erect postures, dressed in the finest that Italy has to offer; yet on the inside, I may be focused on a gorging pain and despair, while your mind may be as perfectly still as a summer seabed. “Hello, how is your day?” We begin.
If our focus is our reality, it seems plausible that the next step in the inductive ladder of consciousness, is to ask ourselves how we can exert some conscious volition over our focus, and therefore, direct our reality. And as just about the entire human population on Planet Earth will attest, this is no small feat.
Focus is constantly oscillating. This is an internal functional layer of the human mind. One thought shifts to the next. One feeling blurs away into another. We look at a tree in one direction, then move our vision a few metres left and look at a car. On and on. Focus oscillates. In order to assess some conscious volition over our focus, we have to be able to hold it still, on a single object, and sustain this, at least for a period of time.
The question arises - do we even want to be able to artificially sustain focus for extended periods? It does seem useful in our present day world. The men and women we laud in our society, the Picassos, the Sheryl Sandbergs, the Tom Bradys undoubtedly do this, very, very well. Meanwhile, our brain in singular focus mode is also very, very much associated with survival mode. To be aware of this, may be useful to you. For Tom Brady, even at the very top of the football chain after 20 years of great success, tomorrow is a day of survival… should he continue to want to win at the highest level. Survival means we continue building our tower, higher and higher, better and better, to be further insulated from the dangers below. Survival means hyper stress.
Typically, after the initial impulse to focus triggers a survival impulse, we enter a flow state. We remain on alert, however that alertness becomes driven less by danger, and more by the activity itself and our interaction with it. Moving away from the example of the superstar athletes and billionaire CEOs on one end, and over to the other end of our man in the jungle; he has passed the initial danger zone and is now in a familiar area of trees and plants, animals and insects, an area where he knows his way around and how to find what he needs. Unknowns still arise, sometimes he deals with them, sometimes he doesn’t, yet his awareness of the specific area expands further and further with each foray into its depths, and he is able to pick out what we wants from it.
What about those situations where focus is not artificially sustained, where it seems to occur naturally in and of itself? We call this play. Focus through play resides in an entirely alternate component of our psyche to survival. Play is also present to the environment, to the people, to the activity, much like survival is, though it emerges from a totally different place. Play is independent of needs, desires, fears and.. you get the idea. Players also stumble and cry, they laugh, and they go back to what they are doing, playing presently. To want to play with something or someone, means you enjoy being with it. Survival does not directly infer this, quite obviously.
Play focus thrives on newness and variety, while survival focus thrives on contained limits and more of the same. Paradoxically, when we think of the people who tend to play (i.e., the children in the playground, the designer in the studio, the couple on a romantic retreat), they tend to be in situations of safety and routine, within contained limits, albeit imperceptible ones. Play is the exploration of life, traversing a vast field of land flourishing with an assortment of life. You can think of it as horizontal. An expansion of our awareness of life. Survival is building our singular high tower rising up into the sky. Think of it as vertical. An intensity to our will for life (or repulsion from death).
In both cases, play and survival, we grow into that which we focus on. The greater our focus, the more our perception of reality expands; the longer we remain focused, the more our perception of reality expands. Our reality quite literally expands. We give our energy to focus, whether by necessity in the case of survival, or by (let’s say) curiosity in the case of play, and through this exchange of energy, our universe grows, inflates, widens, balloons. And it’s not easy to go back.