When you concentrate you also ignore stuff.
(we all concentrate, for work, play, reading, studying, school … we practice it in school … people who are good at it are “good workers”…)
But you call it CONCENTRATION instead of IGNORING because the stuff you concentrate on gets easy-to-see but the stuff you ignore sorta fades away (and then you stop thinking about it, and then it disappears).
The stuff you concentrate on is relatively small. A book. An idea. A game. An attractive girl’s butt. A plan for the future. A tv show.
And that stuff getting ignored is relatively HUGE. Like a whole invisible universe there.
It’s spooky when you think of it. Like a little bit of DIY brain surgery that everybody does but nobody talks about. Like we’re all a bunch of Harry Potters casting obliviate upon ourselves.
And then we forgot that we cast it, because it’s obliviate.
So tell me what you think.
You are in a dark room with a flashlight.
You cast a circle of light. You see a bit of rug, the edge of the couch.
Outside that it’s dark. No information. Not even thought about. Nonexistent.
The whole universe exists inside the circle of light.
Then you see something interesting. A detail on the fabric of the couch. You focus. The circle of light narrows and brightens. The darkness grows…
Now the universe is a bit of pattern on a bit of cloth.
Repeat…
And here’s a question : how would you reverse this process?
Unfocus. Move your head / fladhlight around. Take a step back.
I know how to focus my attention on a thing. But that other stuff, I don’t think I’ve seen actual directions on how to do that.
How do you unfocus your attention, or move it around in a way that isn’t “focusing it on a thing”? Drugs?
I often remind my significant other to participate in mindfulness exercises along side me to take a moment to look at “the bigger picture” what that is for her or for you is in my mind personal. For me I like to just observe everything in my environment, I try not to focus in on any particular feeling or sight or thought etc. One practice that has helped with this immensely has been Chinese Gong Fu Tea. Every weekend my partner and I take about 2 hours to sit and have tea and be observant of our lives and worlds in a way that doesn’t focus on any one particular thing. It’s almost like meditation, which is something Buddhist monks practice for decades and sometimes never achieve their enlightenment. For you your enlightenment might be achieving that defocused state and becoming more present with what’s around you.
Practice with eye gazing. You can shift looking mode. We tend to forget this because our modern landscape keeps us mostly in a narrow gaze
Literally shaking your head helps. Meditation helps. Literally taking a few steps back so more things enter your field of view and details blur helps. Coming into a room from a different door can help. Laying on the floor, bending over backwards, crouching, standing on a chair, anything that puts you in a physically different perspective.
Your brain will shortcut around things it expects to focus in on important details. Getting a new perspective prevents this, because your brain doesn’t have those shortcuts in place yet.