A mindfulness exercise to notice where your attention goes: inner thoughts and memories, or outer sounds and events. The practice trains you to stay centered rather than getting pulled into either screen, building a habit of waking up to how reality unfolds.
Chapters
Illustration 5: Tracking Your Attention. Habit: Not to fall asleep, but to wake up. If you can achieve this, your reality will begin to unfold in ways you have yet to see. But first, let's talk about your current baseline of attention and triggers into a non-conscious state. So where do you spend most of your time? Is it in the inner screen or the outer screen? When you do find yourself in a state of being aware, what takes you from it more easily, your inner thoughts or the outer circumstances? Let's discuss briefly some identifying triggers so you can be more aware of them in the future. So examples of external triggers or something that sends you into the outer screen. You just met with someone. You are listening to someone talk. The TV is on and you tune in, or you're listening to some music and singing along. You are arguing with someone or something. Someone asks you something or is trying to engage you. Something happened close to you. It doesn't matter what, some kind of sound, any kind of movement, anything that attracts and engages your attention. You are taking a walk and focusing on your surroundings. As soon as something happens, focus your attention on it, but don't lose control of your attention. Try to keep it at the center. Pay attention to what is calling you, but do not give it everything. Keep yourself focused and not completely losing yourself or your thoughts. Examples of internal triggers are events that pull you into the internal world. You're getting ready to go somewhere. You're going to do something or take some kind of action. You're about to talk to someone. You're thinking about something, an event from the day, in anticipation of the future, what someone said to you. You're thinking about your past. You're daydreaming. Something good just happened to you. So again, this is about you tracking your attention. Where does your attention usually go? And learning to see those pathways as a moment to wake up and call yourself back to the center screen. So please stay tuned for our next lesson, which is 6, Composing Reality.
