DOUBLE VISION
Notes on the First and Second Attentions
BY ANTERO ALLI
"It is essential that you have Knowledge.
It is also essential
that you escape the Known."
-- J. Krishnamurti
HOW THE TWO ATTENTIONS WORK
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 is 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 presence, energy, phenomena. The first attention looks but cannot see; the second attention only sees. Most people know the feeling of being looked at, as if on display; far fewer know the feeling of being truly seen. Or of seeing. Both first and second attentions are important and necessary for differing reasons.
The underlying purpose of the first attention is survival; to figure out how to stay alive. 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 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 already linked, their mutual interaction is rarely made conscious during daytime waking hours. Putting conscious effort into developing meaningful interaction between both attentions can also bring about fresh experience and information in our night dreams, as well as in waking states.
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, residing in silence and being unknown to yourself. 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 an idea, image or concept; second attention concentrates by merging with the 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 without 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 outer space and 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 can learn to find words, images and ideas that best serve the authenticity and truth of the signal. The second attention shocks the first attention as we can learn to permit enough uncertainty 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; 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 which has inflated its sense of importance in our minds. This inflation has resulted in a kind of mental tyranny over the body/psyche by the mechanism of over-thinking in general and over-literalist thinking in particular. 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 link the first and second attentions together in more meaningful ways.
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 and known. Who is assigned high 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, become dead data depositories.
If basic survival problems remain unsolved -- and when security, status and/or territory become threatened -- survival anxiety can naturally ensue. In an attempt to alleviate this anxiety, the first attention can begin fixating on absolutes as an, albeit unconscious, attempt to restore certainty where no certainty exists. In its extreme, an insatiable appetite for proofs and certitudes can persist and can mask the deeper agendas of frustrated survival needs. This dilemma can also manifest as a fixation on trying to make sense of everything or as a nonstop ranting of rationalizations. First attention cannot solve the problems created by the first attention. By attempting to solve problems with the very mechanistic mindset that created them in the first place, a kind of mobius strip of mental looping occurs courtesy of Monkey Mind. The mad reign of King Monkey Mind can be overthrown by shifting the focus towards the second attention.
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 and/or assume meaning onto whatever is perceived, in lieu of direct perception of the phenomena. This can also occur by dropping labels through an agreement to experience the world without naming what you are experiencing. Infants and very young children see this way most of the time. This begins a process of flexing a perceptual muscle that was at one time active and vital before it weakened and/or atrophied.
The second attention can be cultivated by relaxing the search for meaning. This can be experienced by relaxing the tendency to project and/or assume meaning onto whatever is perceived, in lieu of direct perception of the phenomena. This can also occur by dropping labels through an agreement to experience the world without naming what you are experiencing. Infants and very young children see this way most of the time. This begins a process of flexing a perceptual muscle that was at one time active and vital before it weakened and/or atrophied. As these two attentions recognize each other and find new ways to interact and work together, wisdom builds a bridge between their worlds.
