What did I Delete?

I remember an cool exercise a professor did with our class, to make a point about attention and focus. He told all of us to start with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes, we had 30 seconds to pick out everything that was the color brown. After the 30 seconds we had to close our eyes again and keep them shut. He then asked, "tell me everything that you saw that was green?" We all strained but honestly couldn't think of anything.

The lesson was that we are "deletion creatures." If we are not paying attention or focused on something that matters to us, we delete it from our consciousness. We can often have a fairly narrow window of attention, and that is where we can get ourselves into trouble. We think that the only things that exist are what is in our narrow field of attention. We don't really consider what is outside of it.

Incidentally this is also one of the ways we can drive ourselves a little crazy. If we are focused on something going wrong, that nature of the attention expands and amplifies the object and we tend to feel our emotions more intensely. It also happens in the reverse and it would be helpful to remember this. It can sometimes add a little balance to our reactions in tough circumstances.

The practice of Zazen and "Mindfulness," can help us expand our field of vision. The more we see, the more effectively we can interact with our world. Perhaps it because we are more connected to not only ourselves but the life that's around us that it can do this.

Happiness,

Jaye Morris, Curator
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