Narrow Focus

 The Price which we pay for specialization in conscious attention is ignorance [ignore-ance] of everything else outside its field...if you concentrate on a figure you tend to ignore the background.

Alan Watts

Alan Watts is my man these days.  I am finally ready to understand his teachings.  I have tried for years to do so, sitting down with a bunch of his pamphlet sized and contraband books on my lap while others in my household  chastised me with warnings that it was"sacrilegious" to study such things that went so against the church.  But there I was in my rebellious late teens, with a Norman Vincent Peale book in one hand and an Alan Watts in the other,  determined to learn something valuable.  Norman's teaching I could understand, Alan's went way over my head.  I wasn't ready. 

Now I am. I see my ability to comprehend and soak up these teachings as a testament to my growth. I have advanced from one level to the next. I  am an advanced student now. So many learning barriers have been removed from this proverbial classroom  which is my mind...and it is like "aha!" ....I can see clearly what the many teachers that come in and out of it are teaching. All teachings, all lessons, all levels were so valuable in getting me here. 

Unity Vs Seperation

So the lesson I have been focusing my conscious attention on lately has been this idea that What is explicably two can at the  same time be implicitly one. Every inside has an outside.  Every right has a left.  Every front has a back.  But if we rely only on what our five senses, which are very selective filters,  are allowing into our consciousness we will only see the front and not the back.  We will not see it as one being that needs a front and back, right and left, inside and outside.  We will see the seperate parts and not the whole.  

If we focus on the figure we will also ignore the background.  But that figure could not be if it wasn't for the background. 

Seperating the Organism from the Environment, the Foreground from the Background

As a person who likes to take pictures, I will often purposefully blur the background in my potrait or macro shots. I make the camera "focus" on the figure in front of me.  The figure is what I want you to notice as significant.  The background, I want you to see as insignificant.  I know it would distract from what I want you to notice so I selectively blur it. I narrow my focus. It is as if I am trying to portray that there is a significant organism in an insignificant environment.  Yet,  that  is merely a trick of the camera ...just like the way we see the world is often a trick of the mind. 

That face, that flower, that insect in my photo is nothing without its environment.  I can blur it for the senses, reducing what I allow the  camera and your senses to pick up all I like but the reality is you would not see the figure if it wasn't for the environment it was in. First of all if it wasn't for the environment the organism would not be . And secondly, photographically ...that face you are seeing depends on the  background...on the light, on the colours behind it, on the  shade  etc.  Even if the camera and your mind ignores the background...makes it "appear" insignificant...the background and the figure are inseperable. 

The foreground and the background, the organism and the environment share a unified field of behaviour. 

The organism is not the puppet of the environment, being pushed around by it, nor is the environment a puppet of the organism, being pushed around by it. The relationship between the two ...is transactional. 

We often do not see that do we ? We seperate things and ourselves in a multitude of ways.  We tend to see differences as seperating instead of understanding their unified and transcational behaviour.  We allow our senses to select the input necessary to determine our reality. We therefore often see the seperate figures and not the background. 

Noticing: From a Narrow Focus to a Wide Angle

Our senses, however, are very limited and  selective in what they allow us to pick up from this world. We narrow our focus and use our limiting central vision when we can actually expand our conscious attention instead.  

Just like I can switch lens on my camera depending on what I want to see and capture, we can switch our attention on what we gaze on.  If I put a wide angle lens on my camera ...I am going to pick up everything in the field .  I see how everything belongs in that frame with all the contrasts, highlights and low lights, blacks and whites...it all fits together to create this one image. If I put a zoom lens on I can get really close to one thing at the expense of ignoring everything else. I seperate that thing from its environment.  I isolate it.  I make it appear alone. I remove the contrast to some degree. 

So we can focus our attention with a type of central vision that blurs everything else out or we can open up that vision with a wide angle attention so we see everything.  When we chose the first lens/ attention focus we see the differences and the seperation...making everything look scary.  We become afraid of the contrast that slips into the frame.  We have a tendency to look at the world this way. To select into our conscious attention only that which is note worthy.

Our physical world is a a system of inseperable differences..everyting exists with everything else but we continue not to notice that because what we notice is noteworthy...What is noticed appears to you to be significant and the rest is insignificant. 

Try zooming out of your selective focus on seperate things and look at the whole. Snap  on a wide angle lens...so you can see how all the different things are actually inseperable.

All is well in my world.

Alan Watts/Wiara ( April 2018) The Most Important Lesson, Everyone Should Learn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVpj7WWC-nw