Another Unexpected Meditation

There was another happening in my life – in addition to the one when I photographed wildflowers -- which I decided later had been a form of meditation.

I was interested at that time in analyzing the dynamics of consciousness, and particularly in understanding “attention” and “paying attention”. I realized that whatever is “Now Playing” in that home theater watched by the ultimate Consciousness is determined by what an individual is “paying attention to” at the time.

What an individual experiences at a given moment – among all the possible different ways of experiencing the environment at that time -- is determined by the focus of attention. One woman who remembers a moment in a field might recall only the song of a bird, while another woman who stood next to her might recall only the discomfort of the hot sun on her skin.

I was curious to know what determined the movement of the focus of attention, and so I decided to try an experiment. I lay down on my back on the livingroom floor, closed my eyes, and observed what “came to my attention.” I tried to do nothing. I did not direct my attention anywhere. I just concentrated entirely on where my attention went.

Many things claimed attention in turn: A passing car, a popping sound in a wall, a barking dog, a tickling on my left ear, the faint smell of smoke, a child’s shout down the block, a moment of distant music.

I was fascinated, completely absorbed, to the point that I lay there concentrating for almost an hour, taking in every sound, smell, and sensation as my attention jumped here and there like the beam of a searchlight. My degree of concentration drove most verbal thoughts from my mind.

I began to realize that for some reason this was a very pleasant experience, profoundly relaxing emotionally and physically, bringing a sense of unusual peacefulness, but only later would it occur to me call the experience meditation. As with my wildflower photography meditation, I remember it much more clearly and more frequently than most days of my life.

Because the purpose of my lying on the floor was not to meditate, but rather to learn something about attention, I’ll mention some things that I observed.

Attention is immediately drawn to whatever is new in the environment. When a sound is heard for the first time, it gets top priority. On the other hand, a sound that is continual, or almost continual, in your surroundings gets almost no attention. . . unless it stops, in which case the sudden absence of something gets a flash of immediate attention.

A useful question to ask about most behaviors is, “How does this promote survival?” The explanation in this case must be that something that is familiar generally poses no threat; if it did, you would not have remained in that setting long enough for the thing to become familiar

Of course attention is likely to remain focused for quite a while on something new which persists, but even then attention tends to jump rapidly around from one thing to another – almost as if not wanting to lose track of the items that make up the rest of the picture. Then, if the new phenomenon stays around long enough, it ceases to be new and eventually goes into “safely familiar" status.

I asked, based on my observation, if attention can be placed on more than one thing at the same time, and my answer was that it cannot. Even though you may feel that you are listening to your spouse and the television set at the same time, or that you are listening to music and reading a book simultaneously, I think that your attention is hopping back and forth between the two. Just as the individual frames in a moving picture aren’t distinguishable, the sense of paying attention to two things at once is an illusion.

When I lay down to observe attention, it turned out – as often happens – that what I thought I was going to accomplish was not the most important result of what I did. I observed some interesting things about attention, but I learned more about the meaning of meditation.

Unexpected Meditation

As I’ve mentioned, I don’t have a natural gift for meditation. I find it harder than many people to sit still for long, and maybe because of habits formed as a writer I find it very difficult to stop the flow of verbalized thoughts through my head.

I’m speaking of sitting meditation, which is what we Americans are taught is the standard method of meditating. A very gifted psychic who is far more enlightened spiritually than I told an audience that she simply can’t sit and meditate. She has to be moving about. She meditates while walking in her garden.

I’m convinced of the importance of meditation, but for somebody like me -- whose mother remarked that he never stood in one place for one second while getting dressed for school – an alternative to sitting is desirable.

In the line of “things I discovered without being told” was something that startled me when I looked back and realized what had happened.

At the time of this episode I was going regularly on Sunday mornings to a spiritualist “Lyceum” at Cassadaga, a few miles from where I live. I’ll have a lot more to say about Cassadaga in the future, but for now I’ll just tell you that I found the teachers and discussions very interesting -- so interesting that I was surprised when, early one Sunday, my “inner voice” (that I attribute to my benevolent Higher Self) told me to stay home and do something I’d been planning for a long time – take close-up photographs of very small wildflowers.

I resisted missing Lyceum, but I’ve learned that when the voice speaks, always obey it. And so I took my little digital Kodak and set out on a walk along a quiet Lake Helen road next to a watery swamp, where many flowers of different varieties grew. I’ve always been fascinated by extremely close views of very small things, and I was soon lost in finding and focusing on tiny blossoms.

My all purpose inexpensive camera was poorly suited to that kind of photography, and so it took a tremendous amount of patience and concentration to get a flower centered in the picture, or even in the picture, much less get a sharp focus from a few inches away. I would often have to take half a dozen shots to get one decent one.

I was so lost in what I was doing under the sunny morning sky that I lost all sense of time and place. I knew nothing but the minute details of those beautiful little blossoms, white, gold, blue, and red.



Finally the camera memory was full, and I was amazed to find that I was standing unaware in the middle of the road (which did, after all, host an occasional car), and that three hours had gone by in what I would have judged to be an hour. All that time I had been unaware of my surroundings except for the little flowers that filled my eyes and camera screen.

Only later did it dawn on me that I had been unwittingly meditating. I had been totally focused on small motionless objects that filled my consciousness, the word-stream disappeared from my head, time ceased to exist, I was entirely absorbed in Now, and I felt peace when it was over.

I think it is valid to call that a meditation, and for a long time I continued to experience the benefits.

I recall that morning as a shining peak amid the scores of days on either side of it.