Part Five: Double Vision
notes on the first and second attentions
© 2005 Antero Alli (updated 4/19/10)
HOW THE TWO ATTENTIONS WORK
"It is essential to have Knoweldge; it is also essential to escape the Known."
- J. Krishnamurti
What we pay attention to informs the content of our minds; how we pay attention informs the quality of that content. Two types of attention will be addressed here to demonstrate these ideas. The first attention refers to that awareness linked to language, thinking and the automatic assignment of labels and meaning. The second attention is not linked to language, thinking and/or meaning, but to that awareness linking to presence, energy, phenomena. Both first and second attentions are important and necessary for differing reasons.
The underlying purpose of the first attention is survival; th attention required to solve our survival probelms. The underlying purpose of the second attention is creativity, of directly engaging the autonomous forces of creation. These two attentions can function separately and/or together at various degrees and consequences. Left alone, the first attention fixates awareness on survival issues -- such as security, status, analysis and problem solving, social needs -- with minimal access to the "post-survival" luminosities of rapture, clairvoyance, telepathy, and the various powers of creativity and dreaming.
The first attention expresses a function of physical sight and intellect; the second attention conveys a function of the energetic body and intuition with biological correlation in the Central Nervous System. The sense of sight (first attention) is linked to insight (second attention) by way of stimulation of the light-sensitive, serotonin-rich pineal gland via the optic nerve. This stimulation occurs naturally during the onset of sleep, resulting in the hypnogogic state of shifting imagery that bridges waking and dreaming states. Though both attentions are linked, their mutual interaction remains for the most part latent and rarely made conscious during daytime waking hours. Discovering and developing meaningful interactions between both attentions expresses a function of the greater power of dreaming, of the dreambody or double.
The first attention is stable and stabilizes awareness; the second attention is unstable and destabilizes awareness. First attention stability is maintained by the pursuit of certitudes such as fixed beliefs, ideas, preconceptions, assumptions and dogmas. The unstable second attention is maintained by permitting more uncertainty, with residing in the inner silence and daring to be unknown to oneself. The mutual regulation of both attentions dilate and/or narrow the mind according to each person's anxiety threshold, of how much uncertainty can be permitted before static nervous energy contracts and closes the mind.
Both attentions can be strengthened through different types of concentration. First attention concentrates by fixating on any idea, image or concept; second attention concentrates by merging with the perceived energy. First attention creates a picture and assigns a story, message or meaning to it. The second attention attunes to the signal, frequency or vibration of the energy. A message is the ordering of a signal. Second attention gets the signal, first attention organizes it into a message.
This process already happens by itself, unconsciously and beyond our control, and it happens at the speed of light. The second attention absorbs luminosity and is light-sensitive; the first attention translates energy (light) with pattern recognition and is form-sensitive. The second attention acts like a radar dish receiving raw signals from inner and outer space while the first attention is like the computer program that outputs incoming signals as readable data.
The first attention can act as an anchor to the second attention, as the second attention can act as a catalyst or shock to the first attention. The first attention anchors the second attention when we learn to find words, images and ideas that best serve the authenticity and truth of the signal. The second attention shocks the first attention to permit more uncertainty and to experience the unknown firsthand. If the second attention fails to anchor itself in the first attention, its absorption of luminosity can overstimulate the nervous systems; we become "all lit up with nowhere to go". Not unlike an overheated electrical wire without a ground, the forces of creation are engaged but sputter, disperse and fail to manifest in time and space.
If the first attention consistently avoids the shock of uncertainty and unknowns, the thinking processes can rigidify, grow brittle and overly literal and even paranoid. Both types of attention need each other; both are necessary to increase the power of dreaming.
Educational systems of western civilization have granted the first attention powerful a priori status. This has inflated its sense of importance in our minds. This first attention inflation has resulted in a kind of mental tyranny over the body/psyche by the mechanism of over-thinking and over-literalist interpretations of experience. This compulsion further complicates itself in nonstop, dualistic comparisons and associations until the psyche is turned into a tool for an inflated, arrogant intellect. When we learn to use the intellect as a tool, rather than being owned as its tool, we can begin to discover more meaningful ways that link the first and second attentions together.
The first attention can be called "the knowing mind", as the second attention can be called "the not knowing, or unknowing, mind". Public education systems sanction the first attention by assigning the highest grades and status to what can be proven, justified, remembered, and known. Nobody is rewarded the highest grades for not knowing. However, without activating the second attention’s unknowing mind, our focus remains severely limited by the overly literalist bias of the survival-oriented first attention. Claustrophobia sets in when the first attention dominates the psyche with its compulsive data and proof gathering habits. Our minds fill up with the cluttering detritus of random, impersonal information and eventually, with enough practice, our minds become as musty, dusty attics -- dead data depositories.
If you wish to increase perception, relax the urge to know, to label, and to define. While these reactions may temporarily secure our sense of certitude, their hypnotic influence easily overwhelms the inner action of seeing.
If basic survival problems remain unsolved -- when security, status and/or territory becomes threatened -- survival anxiety naturally ensues. In an attempt to alleviate this anxiety, the first attention can begin fixating on absolutes as an, albeit unconscious, attempt to restore a sense of security via certitude where no certainty actually exists. In its extreme, an insatiable appetite for proofs and certitudes can mask the suffering of frustrated survival/security needs. This dillemna can also manifest as any fixation with trying to make sense of everything or a nonstop rant of pointless rationalizations. First attention cannot solve the problems created by the first attention. Attempting to solve problems with the very mechanistic mindset that created them in the first place perpetuates a kind of mobius strip of mental looping. Mad, mad, mad Monkey Mind.
The mad reign of King Monkey Mind can be overthrown by shifting the focus towards the second attention. The second attention can be cultivated by relaxing the search for meaning. This can be experienced by relaxing the tendency to project, interpret, and/or assume meaning onto whatever is perceived, in lieu of paying more attention to whatever presents itself beofre our eyes. This shioft can be expediated by refusing to label or name or narrate whatever you are perceiving or experiencing. This begins a process of flexing a perceptual muscle that was at one time active and vital before it weakened, corrupted, and/or atrophied.
The application of the first and second attentions turns into wisdom as both awarenesses can work together. To review, the first attention is attached to day-to-day survival concerns, solving everyday mundane problems, and making sense of things by automatically assigning labels and meaning to experience. The second attention is linked to presence, energy and phenomena, allowing direct engagement with the autonomous forces of creation, the archetypes governing existence. As these two attentions recognize each other and find ways to interact and work together, an important bridge can be built between their worlds.
Part One: Orientation
culture, paratheatre, emotional plague
Part Two: Integrity Loss and Recovery
the force of commitment, what feeds the being, the good fight
Part Three: The Performer/Audience Romance
talent and skill, the total act, the No-Form technique
Part Four: Self-Observation and Ego
figuring out ego, from being to playing, 3 stages of work
Part Six: Self-initiation
the bridge between worlds, what drains the power of dreaming
Part Seven: A Cultural Overview
the war in heaven, a society gone mad, and a whole lot of heart
