Pay Attention

The definition of Pay Attention is simple, and the application is likewise simple, as in straightforward. It does, however, take practice. The rewards, the return on our investment, are staggering.

Paying Attention means to notice what we’re doing in real time. It means to notice the effects we produce. It means to notice everything that’s happening, while it’s happening – in real time.

There is an important synergy between Be Present and Pay Attention. The first principle reminds us that our thoughtstream of thoughts, beliefs, images, and concepts distort and disguise reality because they are representational and symbolic.

By slowing down the projection speed of our mind, we can experience the way we superimpose the thoughtstream onto the screen of reality. But to Be Present isn’t the entire game: it just gets us into the game. Once we’re in the game, we have to Pay Attention.

A few days ago, I went into Olmecs Cafe on Bridge Road, five blocks from where I live. I ordered a strong cappuccino and a soy latte. The young man heard me clearly, even repeating my order. The cafe had just opened for the day, it wasn’t busy, and there were no other orders up.

As he was making the cappuccino, he would look up at the television screen mounted on the wall opposite the coffee-making area. He was very engrossed in what was happening on the television. I watched him pour steamed milk into the cup with the extra shots of coffee, and then right into the other cup, the one that was supposed to be a soy latte.

He put them in a little egg carton container and handed them to me. I said, “Thank you, but I’d like to have a soy latte, not a regular latte.” His eyes opened wide and he smiled sheepishly, immediately realizing what he had done. “Sorry, mate, sorry, I was watching the TV program. I’ll fix it.” And he did. No harm, no worries. He wasn’t Paying Attention to what he was doing.

You might think this is a silly example without major significance. This kind of thing happens every day; at work, at home, at the movies, in the yard. Who hasn’t gone on a mission from the living room to the kitchen to get something, only to end up in the den, visit the bedroom on the way back, take a call on our mobile phone, make a mental note to do something at work, and then end up back to the living room. When we sit down, we realize we didn’t get from the kitchen what we set out to get.

We don’t complete our mission for the same reason the young man didn’t make the soy latte. We don’t Pay Attention. The principle is the thing, not how big or small the example. Either we notice what we are doing and how we are doing it, or we don’t. Either we notice the effects and consequences of our actions, or we don’t. Either we notice our true motivations, or we don’t.

We either notice what is actually happening, or we are lost in our thoughtstream. Soy latte, Global Financial Crisis, global warming – we aren’t Paying Attention.

My first training in Paying Attention came during high school. My best friend at the time was Mike Buchanan. We were on the wrestling team together, and we’d sometimes double date. His father, Ken, owned a butcher shop, and Mike and I worked there for a couple of years after school, and on some weekends. We’d serve people at the counter, we’d cut chickens and roasts, we’d sometimes bone out a hind quarter.

It was a dangerous place, with knives and saws and hooks everywhere. Mike’s dad had been in the business for 30 years, and he had the confident manner of someone is who damned good at what they do. Still, he was missing two fingers on one hand, and one on the other.

As I began my after-school work in Buchanan’s Meat Market, I decided to also start classical guitar lessons. Soon, I had a choice: one or the other, but not both. It was just too hard to practice classical guitar with my fingers sliced up and aching, wrapped with band-aids.

I never paid enough attention to what I was doing to not cut myself. I did get better as I went along, sometimes even managing a kind of Zen moment of guiding the knife through a chicken with hardly any pressure, noticing where the joint fit together with just enough space to slip the knife blade in. But the battle to pay attention was constant! It was so easy for my attention to wander. It seemed to have a will of its own; it wasn’t under my control.

I don’t remember getting specific training in Paying Attention; I remember more of a “be careful” instruction. I did manage to leave the meat market with all my fingers, though with scars on my hands to this day. Pay Attention. Notice what you are doing.

My next major training in Pay Attention occurred in the aikido dojo. That’s where I learned that there are two fields in which we have to Pay Attention: focus, noticing what’s happening right in front of you, and awareness, noticing what’s happening around you.

I learned to maintain a one degree focus so that I could (in theory) be completely attentive and responsive to the attack that was coming at me. But I also learned to maintain a simultaneous 360 degrees awareness, which would (in theory) allow me to notice the attacks coming from the sides and behind me.

I learned to be alert to everything that was happening everywhere simultaneously, in real time, as it was happening and how it was happening. Pay Attention. Don’t drift away. Pay Attention, in two specific ways – focus and awareness. The idea is to be alert and attentive, to notice everything that’s happening everywhere.

Not in a conceptual, representational way, in an actual way. It’s all live fire. If your mind drifts, you go flying through the air, or have your wrist snapped in a painful way. The feedback mechanism in Aikido is immediate, unequivocal, and unforgiving. But isn’t this true of everything, if we Pay Attention.

My post-graduate training in how to Pay Attention took place in India, where I lived in an ashram for a number of years, studying meditation. One of my first work assignments was in the kitchen, where I was asked to be a vegetable chopper.

Each morning at about 4am I would go to the kitchen to be mentored by the carrots. Every action in an ashram serves to mirror your degree of awareness and your level of attention, so that you can become more proficient in awareness, and whatever it is you’re doing.

This way of doing anything transforms the thing at hand into a meditation. Everything in an ashram is a meditation, each and every instant is a means of increasing awareness.

On the first day in the kitchen, I was shown how to hold the knife, how to stand properly, and how to slice each carrot into precisely angled pieces of a certain thickness. This was important. Each slice had to be according to specification: a precise angle and thickness.

The supervisor of the vegetable choppers would watch me with fierce and unforgiving eyes. If my posture wobbled, she yelled at me. If my grip on the knife weakened, if I looked up and around at others, she scolded me. The worst always came when I stared off into space, hallucinating imaginary events. I’d usually be brought back into the present by a potato thud against my head.

The supervisor was supposed to do that. It was her job to help me become aware by pointing out when I wasn’t. This is important because, until we develop our capacity, we don’t notice when we aren’t paying attention; we need someone or something to let us know.

The most ruthless teacher of all, though, was the carrot slices themselves. I had been shown what to do and how to do it. Each slice had to be a certain angle and thickness. Knife thrust after knife thrust, slice after slice, carrot after carrot, day after day, week after week.

Each slice just so. I don’t know that anyone who ate what we prepared with the carrots was particularly interested in the just so-ness of each slice. That wasn’t the point. Becoming aware was the point. Pay Attention was the point.

After a time, I hit the mark maybe one in three, which would have been a good average in baseball. The ashram was not baseball. We were supposed to hit the ball every time. And why not?

We had an unambiguous assignment, raw materials, the tools, the training, the ability. With nothing missing, what’s the problem, what’s the variable? Attention. It was always and only attention. Paying Attention.

Up to that point, my attention was very focused on what was in front of me, the pile of carrots: 1 degree of focus. I had forgotten about the 360 degrees of awareness I learned about in aikido.

One day I noticed a wall clock ticking rather loudly. I had never noticed the sound before, it was too remote from my focused attention. But there it was, suddenly in my awareness: tick tock, tick tock.

Spontaneously, I began to notice more and more, farther and farther afield from my focus, without losing focus. I was suddenly alive and awake in a field of awareness, in which I was clearly noticing what was at hand while also noticing, sensing, and feeling what was happening all around me. I was always aware of breath. Not my breathing exactly, just breath.

For me, this experience of breath, of breathing, is the hallmark of Paying Attention. This is when the discipline of Paying Attention – noticing what I was doing and what was happening within and around me – exploded into something I had not experienced before except in deep, eyes-closed, seated meditation.

Just as we have to Pay Attention to what we are doing on the outside, we have to also Pay Attention to what we are doing on the inside. When we don’t notice our thoughts and emotions, we become them.

We get lost in them, and then they define and determine who we are. This is when we will cut our finger, or worse. If we are running a billion dollar multinational company, or leading a country, losing our awareness and succumbing to un-noticed thoughts and passionate emotional tides will be disastrous. It is. Every day.

The carrot slices showed me when, and why, I wasn’t Paying Attention. When and why were the same: lost in my thoughtstream, without even knowing it. If we aren’t Paying Attention, if we aren’t noticing what we are doing and how we are doing it, if we aren’t noticing the effects of our actions, it’s due to one and only one cause: we have become swept away by our thoughtstream.

When we live from the space of silent awareness, Being Present and Paying Attention, we can authentically express our self and make choices that affirm our authenticity.

About the Author:
This article is an excerpt from Robert Rabbin’s new E-book, Authenticity Accelerator: How to an Authentic Life in Ten Words, which is available for purchase and instant download it here.

http://www.peaceofmindaccelerator.com