A friend of mine brought up an interesting topic the other night.  He reminded me that one of our teachers used to say that, "Our beliefs control our attention." or maybe it was "Our attention controls our beliefs."  Maybe it is both - I get confused.  The discussion would then wander off into something about "the first attention" and "the second attention."  My friend wondered what I think about such things.

Well - since I am basically confused about what those phrases mean, I just punted. 

My thoughts are along the lines that when we are young and taught to be who we are, we are inculcated with a set of beliefs.  We agree to accept these beliefs (don Miguel Ruiz calls them "agreements"), and from there on out they form the basis of what we understand about the world.  Even more, they form the basis of what we pay attention to.  An example that helps me understand this process is when I go in the "outback" with my friend Gary.  Gary is a super "birder" - he seems to know and recognize every bird there is, and not only does he recognize them, but he knows their songs, their habitat and their habits. He sees and hears birds everywhere we go.   I, on the other hand, can recognize a few birds such as chickens and ducks, but the rest are a blur of big, small, dark, light, colorful, noisy or silent creatures flying, flitting, and hopping about.  Basically I am a total failure at being a birder.  When we walk in wild places, he experiences a world filled with birds of all sorts, and he is filled with the knowledge and stories of those birds.  I find a world with trees, dirt, streams and a few (very few) wild animals, insects and birds. He pays attention to and sees an entirely different forest than I do even though we are strolling side-by-side, surrounded by the same environment.  His background, learning, and beliefs focus his attention (and his experiences) in one way, and mine do the same for me in a very different way.

In this example I am speaking of the effects of prior learning, but this also includes beliefs.  Gary learned all of those things about birds (and a whole lot of other things in nature) because he believed that it was important to do so.  I enjoy the same places, but I don't believe that it is important for me to learn the details about the plants and animals.  I do believe that it is important to learn the details about physics and engineering things, so I notice and appreciate those things - and point them out to Gary.  We have different beliefs about what is important, and what our roles in life should be, and based upon those beliefs we focused our attention and therefore have very different experiences.  If you look closely, I think you will notice that this effect goes far into our lives - focusing our attention and controlling our experiences. 

Experiencing the world based upon our belief system is sometimes called the "first attention" because it is how we first learned to attend to things, notice things, and give them meaning (and emotions).  We didn't learn these beliefs on purpose, they were taught to us by our parents, friends, teachers, television, movies, etc.  We were bombarded with beliefs, many of which were in direct contradiction with each other.  We accepted what we accepted, and agreed that those were correct and "right." 

Later in life maybe we get a chance to revisit some of these beliefs.  Maybe we can learn to place our attention on a wider range of topics and maybe we can then use what is found in this new attention to change our beliefs, or even use our attention to observe and experience without biasing it by our beliefs.  Maybe we can find a way to question our beliefs and then search for new 'truths' and new ideas about what is correct and "right." Maybe we can break the link between our beliefs and our attention. I think that when we start to do this it is the beginning of a new life, one that more closely aligns with reality. This idea of observing based upon what is there rather than upon our beliefs is the starting point for "the second attention."

There is a much weirder, and much more mysterious meaning associated with the idea of "the second attention."  In some traditions it alludes to the possibility of expanding our attention to actually see and experience things that are real, but "hidden" from us in everyday life.  (Not actually hidden, just not noticed) Who knows, maybe ghosts fall into the realm of things that can be experienced, but that we have learned to not experience. I will leave the discussion of these topics to another time and maybe another place. 

On an entirely different topic.  I dropped my smart phone the other day and cracked the screen into a whole mosaic of small cracks. Everything still works, but it doesn't look so good.  I went to a tiny store in Davis that I was told fixes them for $30.  I was offered a repair for $100 (I guess I look like I could afford it).  That seemed like too much, so I ordered a repair kit for $15 (I think I could have gotten one for around $5 but didn't want to mess around trying to get a super deal).  I wonder how this is going to work out.  Maybe it will be easy, and I will have saved $80.  Maybe it will be less than easy and I will have wasted $300 (because of my breaking the phone in the process).  I am anxious to try, but worried about whether or not I have the skills or patience for this sort of thing.