It’s a funny thing thinking about this. At some point we all realise that we are experiencing things. What we don’t realise is that the things we experience become the things we are. Maybe some of us do, but I think that takes time, and, ironically, experience.
So how do we know how our experiences are becoming what we are? And do we have any choice in the matter? I believe the key lies in what we pay attention to. Attention is not something that is easily understood. As children we may play with our attention, but we are not often trained in the modes of attending available to us. The thing is, our modes of attention determine to a massive extent what we experience. Our ability to attend is biologically naturally limited, but we can learn to extend it.
Today there are many different modalities for working with attention. Some of the most common practices include meditation, mindfulness, and even more extreme breath work like the Wim Hoff method. My preferred approach is the Alexander Technique. Unlike most other approaches, it incorporates and values all levels of being in experience, therefore not focusing on one part or separating mind, body, soul or anything else from everything else.
Choosing to see yourself as a whole, rather than as parts, is one way of paying attention that you can cultivate. Man, does that enhance the kind of experience you can have! When I choose to focus on a pain I may be having, it seems to suck me into that pain, sort of trapping me in that experience of being. When I choose to see that while I’m in pain, I still can experience ease elsewhere, and attend to the broader experience around me, I don’t find myself trapped by that pain. How I attend to the situation influences my opinions and impressions, which become my ingrained and experienced ideas: My truths.
Taking that further, I have to wonder what I retain from these two kinds of experiences. What do I learn, and then incorporate into my future self, subconsciously? Which do I prefer? If I am to become something else based on my experiences now, then surely how I’m having those experiences is important. In an indirect way, I become the things I choose to pay attention to while events occur around me and within me.
Learning to pay attention more usefully has to be important, don’t you think?
In Time With Yourself 