I will describe how my life gets, because I am focus challenged. I wake in the morning and whatever I was dreaming is still quite active in what they call my “working memory.” The mood or imagery or conversation is in my head and won’t leave despite my maybe needing it to. I walk out of the bedroom and am bombarded by sunlight and sounds that mean absolutely nothing to me, but they mix in my attention with the remnants of the dream. Sort of creating a mixed up mess in my head. I get into what might seem like “compulsive” behaviours like my morning online activity, but if I do not do these then the awareness of the idea to do them goes into the pile. If I do them, then they just sort of blur into the expected pattern in my memory and I experience less stress.

I do not get “sleepy”, not even when I’m sleepy, nor am I ever “awake.” I have to sort out a stream of sensory impressions to greet my wife when she wakes up and comes downstairs. I want to hug and kiss her good morning but if I slept poorly my physical awareness is very dull. She feels it and asks me what’s wrong, which just makes me feel even more off because I don’t enjoy the mental cesspool in my head. I will stop there, but I think you can imagine what the fullness of a day without focus is like, yes?

Does it stay that way, or does it fall into some order as the day goes on? Without active control, no, it won’t fall into any order. It will lead to a panic attack if I have had no time to control it. I have to select key things to engage, and by consciously selecting key stimuli I can swamp out the mess in my head. I basically have to “brainwash” myself on a daily basis.

Then you have to make a concentrated effort to focus? Yes, and all the automatic “subconscious” stuff is right there in the equation. This is why I am quite good at interpreting dreams, because those processes are going on in my awareness fully, right while I’m awake.

Ok, now I didn’t mean to just complain about my condition. I was offering context for what can actually be done to engage focus. Regarding focus, I have to consciously brainwash myself, but everyone else is brainwashed also. But where it gets to be a problem is they didn’t choose it, and they often don’t consciously edit it.

Brainwashed as in mentally programmed? Yes. The new brain research shows that you have a network of regions in your brain that engage in a constant “default” dialogue. A constant standby process that makes you able to react quickly and appropriately to things without having to give them excessive attention. It is shaped by your education and experience. It is available to conscious awareness. This is why you don’t fall into an altered state whenever you have to rapidly correct the course of your vehicle, or suddenly stop walking so you won’t step out into the street and get run over.

Autonomic? It is related to that.

A good survival thing to have? It is vital to survival, even for me.

Now, it isn’t rigid. It isn’t fixed. It’s like the hard drive in your computer. You can write to it and rewrite any “program” freely if you accept and are aware of the programming process. You don’t even have to include anything “paranormal” in the process, but it applies on a spiritual and metaphysical level also. Your programming language is your senses. Your every day organic sense organs are writing to your “focus/mind” all the time, and you can change its content by changing your perceptual behaviour. One part of that is the supposed “enhanced” senses of the blind. They don’t have enhanced hearing or smell. Their senses are the same as ours. They just use their perpetual behaviour more deliberately. They have to consciously listen for what they can’t see. A lot of our behaviour is more or less an automatic reaction to our senses, our “sensation”, but because we don’t fully engage the process of perception we get this “trash” input that warps our behaviour.

Like the kinaesthetic sense, you get sensations of bodily attention all the time, tension, or peace, but we are trained into ignoring these. They don’t go away.

The stuff that just ends up in the proverbial trash heap of our subconscious that we don’t really pay a lot of attention to? Exactly, and the subconscious trash heap is your reality. This is why if you start having nightmares, your waking life starts going bad and vice versa. It doesn’t have to be uncontrolled. If I want to cook a tasty cake does it help me to be paying attention to what color someone’s shirt is? If my perception is on how green my wife’s shirt is I may just not cook that cake, or I will compose it but there will be a lot of errors and it won’t be because there is something wrong with green shirts. It will be because of the quality of my focus, values, beliefs, articles of faith. These matter a great deal, or do they?

They direct attention I expect? Can, but do they?

They are the filter? They are the focus and guide for the actualization of any energy, especially if you want it to have any actual constructive impact. Why do people ignore these things?

Hmm, lazy? Oh, I would say they aren’t lazy. They are generally very busy and eager to “fix problems” and “correct people.” It’s really energy consuming to correct people, especially to punish them, but people give huge amounts of energy to doing so, do they not? What does this pattern of behaviour create?

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~