I am fascinated by the different qualities attention or awareness can adopt. My awareness can be limp, as when I am tired, lacking the needed energy to be able to focus on one thing with conviction, palpably falling short of any task for which I want to summon it. Or it can pool, which happens in a kind of lazy contemplation, like when I choose to gaze, to rest my attention upon, a bush or a butterfly or something. The object is usually something in nature, because art, created by humans, usually requires more of my consciousness, and can thus induce a deeper, more nuanced kind of contemplation. Instead of pooling, when I experience good art, my awareness is much more engaged, and more is demanded of it than in the facile interaction (if I can even call it an interaction) with the plant. Of course, different kinds of art induce different qualities of contemplation. With a painting as its object, my awareness does not just pool, it dives--not just into the painting itself, but deeper into the present moment. It feels as if the right now is enriched, becomes fuller; my perception of the room's texture changes. For a moment, I am reminded, emphatically, that the world and my experience of it is not just flat, mundane, and repetitive. It feels as if I were hanging out on the surface of the ocean, being lulled into the lazy assumption that this is all there is, and the painting brought me down just a few inches, below the surface, and I can already see hints that there is so much more going on.
In conversation, there is a distinct pleasure in observing the awarenesses of several people, let's say two, and the ways in which they may interact. In some conversations, one person may lead, set the tempo, and the other may follow, happily or not, in a supporting role. In others, the two awarenesses seem to be unsuccessfully trying to locate each other in a maze. And the barriers in that maze may be the result of cultural differences, emotional history, or they may simply be erected out or nervousness or insecurity. Some conversations, such as those between close friends who haven't seen each other in a good while, begin immediately with the two awarenesses seamlessly merging, each being expanded and colored by the other. There is a shared space between the two that can only be inhabited fully when the two are together, like a room that requires two different keys to open, and there is a joy at the opportunity to enter this space again. Perhaps more exciting is the process of creating this shared space, whether by lovers or best friends or even colleagues.
In meditation, depending on the kind, awareness can bore, like a prisoner escaping from his cell, it can tighten, it can hover, it can feed back upon itself. By this last one I mean the process of sitting in meditation and focusing one's awareness on being aware of its own awareness. Who is aware? What is aware of who is asking the question, "Who is aware?" How far back do you go? Or is there something already back there? Is there even a back?
