#380 - The Roots of Attention

#380 - The Roots of Attention

Bibliography

• Author: Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content
• Full_Title: #380 - The Roots of Attention
• Category: podcasts
• URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/96d14901-1bf1-4135-945f-b5774a9a7ec7
• Last Highlighted Date: 2024-09-14 05:01:26.515706+00:00

Highlights

• Episode AI notes
  1. Attention functions as a vital evolutionary tool, operating through three intertwined systems: selective focus (flashlight), broad awareness (floodlight), and goal-oriented coordination (juggler).
  2. Mindfulness enhances awareness of present experiences, allowing individuals to process unfiltered data about their surroundings and internal states without preconceived notions or emotional interference.
  3. Mindfulness practice involves three steps: focusing on breath sensations, noticing when the mind wanders, and redirecting attention back to the breath, reinforcing mental strength and habitual mindfulness.
  4. Engaging with brain networks through mindfulness fosters both understanding and practical access to tools, enhancing one’s agency and capacity for positive change.
  5. Observing and challenging the solidity of thoughts can help break free from the constraints of mental phenomena, revealing the fluid nature of experiences and offering greater freedom.
  6. Non-dualistic mindfulness practice transcends ego constraints and structured problems, fostering a deeper engagement with the mystery of existence.
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• Illuminate Your Attention: Direct, Broad, and Goal-Oriented Summary: Attention is a complex system that operates through three distinct modes: selective focus, alertness, and goal-oriented selection. The first mode is selective attention, likened to a flashlight, illuminating specific information while excluding others and revealing biases in perception. The second mode, alertness, acts like a floodlight, capturing everything happening in the moment without selectivity, ensuring broad awareness. The third mode focuses on aligning actions with goals, comparable to a juggler managing multiple tasks simultaneously. These aspects of attention interact and are supported by different brain systems, forming a critical foundation for mindfulness practices. Transcript: Speaker 1 The first system of attention is really regarding sort of selective focus or selection, content-based privileging of some information at the exclusion of other information. And that prioritizing and privileging in the brain, we know, shows up as biased information in favor of what we pay attention to. So this would be something like the brain’s orienting system, as well as aspects of what executive functioning does. But the core thing here is some things matter and our advantage and other things are not. So I refer to this in this kind of metaphor of a flashlight. So if you’re in a darkened room, this aspect of attention would be like having a flashlight privilege wherever it is that you’re directing it toward. And the holding of the flashlight is its sort of endogenous or control capability, that you can move around and guide what you need to do on a sort of piece by piece basis to put together, Making your way out of the room if you’re in a darkened room. So the features of this kind of attention are really narrow, constrained, high signal-to ratio. But if we move away from that system and kind of talk about the next aspect of attention, it’s almost the exact opposite. And it might even tie into what you were describing as awareness, which is formally the brain’s alerting system. So this we could think of as privileging not the content like the flashlight, but the moment. Because really when you think about being alert, it’s about what is happening, the full spectrum of what is happening right now. You can’t save up being alert for later. Low signal to noise ratio, broad, receptive. And sometimes I’ll refer to this as sort of a floodlight. Just everything that is happening without a selectivity is illuminated in this moment for your full conscious access. So narrow, directed, broad and receptive. And then the third aspect of attention, which of course, all of these interact with each other in some way and are supported by distinct brain systems. The third aspect is really regarding goal related selection. So it’s not based on the particular content or the moment like the first two, but what are my goals in this moment? What do I want to be doing? And then ensuring that our actions align with our goals. So something called executive functioning and this system’s job or you might call it a tension control. This system’s job is to ensure that goals and actions are aligned and of course correct when they’re not. And I like the metaphor here of a juggler. So you’re kind of keeping all the balls in the air. You’re not trying to do every single individual task, but you’re overseeing and coordinating. So all three of these in my mind very much relate to mindfulness and mindfulness practice, which I’m happy to talk about next, but just want to pause. Is there anything else you want to ask me about?
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• Mindfulness Illuminates Present Awareness Summary: Recalling past events, like a recent dinner, involves actively accessing specific memories and focusing attention on particular experiences. This process highlights the importance of both internal and external stimuli in our awareness. Mindfulness serves as a mental mode that enhances this capacity by promoting purposeful attention to our present moment experiences. It fosters a state characterized by non-elaboration and non-reactivity, allowing individuals to access raw, unfiltered data about their surroundings and internal states. Such a mindful approach helps individuals better process and understand their experiences without the interference of preconceived notions or emotional reactions. Transcript: Speaker 1 So if I ask you to remember what you had for dinner last night, in some sense, what you’re doing is recalling the episode of last night’s events, pointing the flashlight to the granular Time period of dinner, maybe even visualizing what you had and pulling that out so you have more access to that information. Or it could be captured by a thought, like, oh shoot, did I leave my faucet running or whatever it might be. So I think that the internal-extral domain, as well as this multiplicity of how we spotlight information, is important to think about. Now, the excitement for me regarding mindfulness is that it seemed to cover a lot of this terrain. And the way that I would describe mindfulness sort of most broadly is that it’s a mental mode, a way of making the mind. It’s an intrinsic capacity. You don’t get mindful only by practicing mindfulness meditation. You hold this in what you possess in your mind. And that mental mode is characterized by this sort of purposeful attention to our present moment experience with these qualities of non-elaboration and non-reactivity. So we’re doing our best when we are in a mindful mode of getting the raw data, not an editorialized version, but the raw data of our present moment experience that has both to do with what’s Happening sort of externally and internally. Speaker 2 Yeah, so again, just to take another pass over that same ground with
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• Focus, Notice, Redirect: The Mindfulness Matrix Summary: Mindfulness practice can be distilled into three essential steps: focus on breath-related sensations, notice when the mind wanders, and redirect attention back to the breath. This approach resembles a mental workout, where individuals practice tuning into their present experience, reinforcing mental strength through repeated engagement. By maintaining attention on the breath, practitioners create a framework that helps them identify when they stray from their mental target, ultimately allowing mindfulness qualities to become habitual and automatic in daily life. Transcript: Speaker 1 We can talk about the multi-dimensionality, we call it the matrix of mindfulness. But if we just go back to the foundational practice that everybody listening to us can anchor around. So, if it’s something like mindfulness of the breath and the instruction, again, is focused on breath-related sensations, where you’re saying as sensory as possible with regard To those. So in some sense, the flashlight is focused on an anchoring object, which is the unfolding of the breath without manipulating it in any way. And the second part of the instruction being, notice when your mind has wandered away. So in some sense, the floodlight is on, what is happening in my unfolding experience right now? And then the third, which is redirect back, which is essentially, am I on my goal-related task? And for the formal period of time, I’m doing this mindfulness of breath practice, my attention should be on breath-related sensations. So even if you shorthand this, and a lot of our military colleagues will call this our mental push-up, so focus, notice, redirect, and repeat as what might be going on in an unfolding Of a couple 20-minute, 10-minute, 12-minute mindfulness practice. The qualities that you’re talking about become engaged and exercised pretty quickly. And the idea is that the repeated engagement in those aspects are what gets strengthened and allow us to then carry them around, like you said, by default. So being able to have a target for where you should be placing your mind in the backdrop allows you to see when you’re off that target. And part of that requires kind of tuning in to what is the unfolding of my present moment experience. I’m watching it.
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• Embrace the Spectrum: From Practice to Understanding Summary: Engaging deeply with brain networks fosters a dual approach, blending high-level understanding with practical access to tools for a wider audience. This engagement underscores the shared goals of knowledge acquisition and accessibility, revealing that the pursuit of understanding the fundamental nature of experience ultimately enhances one’s agency and ability to effect positive change. Through mindfulness practices, individuals can achieve a de-identification from their experiences, enabling a profound shift where the subject becomes an object of observation, facilitating an enhanced awareness and perspective on their unfolding lives. Transcript: Speaker 1 Well, it’s interesting because this is almost exactly the kind of conversations that Cliff and John and Antoine and I had for four years as we were writing this paper. And it is funny because while some of those folks, actually all three of them, have spent a lot more time with the more intensive adept practitioners, I’m on the other side of the spectrum, Frankly. I mean, the way I can talk to you about brain networks and I’m certainly very interested in the fundamental nature of what is happening and changing, my core interest is in improving Access, implementation access to these tools to as many people as can be reached. And I don’t actually see the goals as highfalutin versus every day. I see them as the same because of what you’re saying is that in some sense, as you get closer and closer to understanding the actual nature of not the ordinary subjective experience that You have, but the actual nature of what is happening that gives you that your building blocks for experience, you have more agency to do something differently that might actually advantage Your life and your functioning. So I connect the dots often. But to go back to your question regarding the, in some sense, I think you’re talking about non-dual practice now, but going from the notion of a subject-object distinction, right? So let’s even just, let’s just, I’m going to throw some terms out and you know, you can clarify as you have been if you don’t mind. So if one aspect of what emerges as we practice mindfulness is a better ability to become de-identified or dis-identified with our experience so that we’re watching what is unfolding. That is oftentimes referred to as de-centering. We’re not that we’re a fly on the wall or we’re hovering above, we’re watching what’s occurring, not from the direct eyes of I, but we’re turning the subject into object.
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• Break the Illusion of Objectness Summary: Mental phenomena can act as constraints, akin to a straitjacket, by defining how we perceive ourselves and our experiences. We often believe we are fixed in certain ways or shaped by external circumstances. One approach to overcoming these limitations is to observe our thoughts. A more advanced method involves challenging the solidity of these mental constructs, recognizing that they are an illusion we create. Understanding that the nature of these mental events is fluid rather than solid allows for greater freedom and flexibility in our thoughts and experiences. Transcript: Speaker 1 We hold these mental phenomenon that can actually really tie us down and constrain us. Whether it’s something like, I’m this kind of a person or I always experience X, Y, or Z, or life has handed me this kind of set of factors, we’re constrained by that. It’s like a straitjacket. So one approach is, okay, at least watch the mind. The other approach, which we could call maybe more advanced, we could call it as a different approach, which I think takes more practice, is challenge the notion of objectness. Actually see that that holding together of mental events is illusory. I mean, you made it up. I mean, and there’s something that actually drives in the brain that happening, but that actually its nature is intrinsically not solid.
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• Embrace the Mystery Beyond Duality Summary: Dualistic practitioners of mindfulness tend to return to identifiable problems and a sense of ego, often able to articulate their sense of unfulfillment. In contrast, non-dualistic practitioners, when faced with the same questions about their state of enlightenment, experience a deeper engagement with the mystery of existence that transcends structured problems, regardless of their emotional or physiological states. This engagement points to a profound understanding of being devoid of the usual ego constraints. Transcript: Speaker 2 Like, when a dualistic and non-dualistic practitioner are both lost in thought, well, then they’re both lost in thought. But the difference is when they’re no longer lost, when someone snaps their fingers and says, come back, what can you realize now? The dualistic practitioner of mindfulness returns to the problem in some sense, the problem of having to pay attention for a reason. Now granted, it can be very it can be very pleasant, it can taste like a certain kind of freedom, and that’s great, and that’s, that really is true. But if you were to ask a dualistic practitioner of mindfulness, like, how in this moment do you know that you’re not a Buddha already? Right? How do you know you’re unenlightened? He or she can usually tell you, right? I mean, you can find the thing that proves to you that you’re still just this kind of ego bound meditator still trying to work it out and untie the knot of self. Whereas, once you can actually practice non-dualistically, to be asked that question is to be confronted by the just the pure mystery of being in that moment, which is not structured In the way that gives any evidence of a problem. And that’s true even if the physiology of some negative state is still present. So let’s say you were angry a moment ago and then all of a sudden you become mindful.
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