Losing Oneself

Tag: attention

  • default mode network

    If you start reading about consciousness, the brain and mindfulness practices you will come across the term Default Mode Network or DMN. It refers to network of brain structures responsible for the “inattentive wandering of our minds” (Williams, 2014) that was first described by Marcus Raichle in 2001.

    The term is relevant in Losing Oneself because of how experiences of movement improvisation seem to intersect with mindfulness practices.

    Matthew Williams describes the mental state of inattention that is synonymous with the DMN:

    By “inattention” I mean times when you are not attending to physical activity, engaging with the external environment, or carrying on a conversation. Inattention, in the way I am using it, describes states of daydreaming, contemplating the future, reliving the past, or general rumination. The DMN is the set of neurologic structures responsible for this ruminative mental activity.

    In Williams’ excellent overview of the neurscience of mindfulness he compares the DMN with the task positive network (TPN). Who doesn’t love a three letter acronym (TLA)?

    Compare this description of inattention with how paying attention is ceasing to do something.

  • paying attention is ceasing to do something

    It seems generally hard to get a handle on words like perception, attention and sensation, and especially so in nonduality: When paying attention who is the subject doing the attending, and what is the object that is being attended to?

    Here’s Sam Harris from his Waking Up app on how choice happens:

    When we focus our attention on consciousness, who is it that is being attentive? In other words, which faculty of mind can set the focus to the experience of consciousness? Well, like many of these kinds of questions, much of this seems backwards from the experience of just noticing how consciousness is. It’s not that you are focusing your attention on consciousness, you are simply ceasing to be distracted, […] you’re ceasing to be identified with thought and with attention itself.

    The feeling that you can direct your attention is part of this undercurrent of thinking that you’re not noticing […] there’s simply consciousness … already. Everything is appearing on its own, including acts of attention. And the truth is you don’t even have to be attentive, you simply have to no longer be distracted, you’re ceasing to do something, you’re not doing something, the sense that you’re doing something is more distraction.

    – Sam Harris

    I find this very useful indeed. That paying attention is a recognition of distraction and that if I have the thought (one of many) “pay attention to the weight of my arm” the flow of distracted thought ceases and there is simply arm’s weight being sensed.

  • the paradox of choice

    In the middle of a guided Waking Up meditation I hear the following words:

    Observe that you don’t actually choose the next thing you notice; whatever it is. Everything is simply appearing, including acts of attention. You don’t know what you will pay attention to next. See if you can drop back into that position of merely witnessing whatever happens.

    – Sam Harris, https://dynamic.wakingup.com/daily/DA9545D

    This is a difficult idea to assimilate: even the act of attending to the body is simply appearing in consciousness, and we do not know what we will pay attention to next. Consciousness is merely happening.

    But perhaps the condition of unusually high degrees of movement provided by the context of dancing mean that sensations in the body are simply more likely to appear in consciousness. If this is the case, then is there an agent here? And if so, who is that agent?

    This is a paradox of choice. We think we are directing our attention and it feels like we are directing our attention, but attention is merely yet another appearance in consciousness. If this is the case, then why do we move or dance in the ways we do? Habit? Training? Some kind of predictive processing in which we our orient towards movement and body-based priors feed consciousness and vice versa?

    Here’s the full transcript of the meditation:

    Let your body resolve itself into a cloud of sensation. Pay close enough attention so as to relinquish the form of your body. The shape of your hands, and back and head. Just let each new sensation appear in consciousness.

    And among this many sensations are those of the breath.

    And now notice whatever sounds you hear. And let your mind expand so it’s just the space in which sounds and sensations are appearing.

    And the moment you notice you are lost in thought, watch the thought itself unwind. And just come back to noticing sensations and sounds.

    Observe that you don’t actually choose the next thing you notice; whatever it is. Everything is simply appearing, including acts of attention. You don’t know what you will pay attention to next. See if you can drop back into that position of merely witnessing whatever happens.

    Again the moment you notice a thought is present witness it clearly. Where does it go? And then briefly look for the thinker. Look for the seat of attention. Look for what’s looking. And then leave your mind at rest.

    In the last minute of the session, become clearly aware of the sensations in your body. Return to the undifferentiated cloud of temperature, and pressure, tingling. Whatever is there.

    – Sam Harris, https://dynamic.wakingup.com/daily/DA9545D