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With the Decision Maker

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DECISION MAKING THROUGH 2nd ATTENTION

Second Attention (Attendance)

Second Attention is a practice associated with impartial identification through observing or witnessing our personality self, a means to gaining clarity and equanimity, and a way to lessen suffering. This aspect of our mind’s function can help us to assess changes and loss related to our self-identity as being only one part of our total self for instance.  Making a distinction between consciousness, particularly of self, and self-awareness is helpful to understanding the second attention aspect of our nature.

Essentially, consciousness of self (self-consciousness) is awareness of our body, thoughts, feelings as well as our interactions with the surrounding environment.  Self-awareness is recognizing that we are conscious – that we are aware we exist.  Second attention is the act of choosing to focus on our self-awareness.  In doing so, we develop a meta-awareness or awareness of our awareness.  Ordinarily, we mainly focus on being conscious of self.  This is evident by our responses and reactions to sensations as they relate to environmental situations externally, or to our thoughts and feelings internally.

Focusing on self-awareness; aka through second attention, helps us to keep life events in context.  It helps us to not over identify with what is happening and to not as easily become overwhelmed.  When our constellation of beliefs is challenged dramatically or, worse yet, is torn asunder by contrary-to-belief information entering our mind, accompanying our consciousness of self with attention to our self-awareness can be helpful.  Even if we do so only intermittently, it can still be very beneficial.  We gradually develop what is sometimes referred to as a Witness Self as a result.

Initiating and practicing second attention while participating in meaningful and caring acts is a good way to strengthen this attribute we have.  Care inspires intention and attention.  When we care about something or someone, we have a direction for our intention to follow and we our motivated to attend to whatever it is we need to do to achieve our desired outcome.  Our second attention requires us to be present to the moment before us as observers.  Care accomplishes this.  Practicing in this manner we condition ourselves to being able to more frequently respond to insight through observation and relative detachment from our perceptions.

When we have something meaningful to do, something we care about, we come into the NOW, which is a hallmark of second attention.  Our ability to enter this aspect of our nature, the observing part, and to be attentive to it can help us to make distinctions among our thoughts and feelings, receive insights, and gain clarity as well.  Engaging our second attention activates a self-aware/conscious-of-self mind set whereby we simultaneously experience being and doing.  Meaning and care provide direction and motivation for doing while paying attention to our awareness creates an experience of being.

We have a deciding side to our nature as exhibited through our natural tendency to want to have options…to choose.  While in a space of meaning and caring, our distractions lessen, our ability to hold focus strengthens, our inner mind’s chatter quells; we become more effective decision makers to the degree we can optimize this state of mind.  Setting an intention is paramount…to affirm our will to maintain clarity and balance.  Thereafter, to affirm a desire to be open to receiving guidance and insight, subtle as it may seem, for making balanced decisions is important.  Follow through on any insights gleamed, utilizing them in service of decisions to be made needs to happen.  Finally, grounding decisions in and through our relationship to tasks, to others, and to ourselves is necessary to complete the process.

Practicing this technique, a form of mindfulness through relating internally to a neutral state of mind by observing while at the same moment relating externally as applied through intention and diligence to care, helps us to foster equanimity and insight.  This method of meditating, through engaging life, is a practical path that can be employed with relative ease.  It can develop into something that becomes automatic after a while…like our breathing.

Once established, entering second attention through our willingness and receptivity to allow this process to operate as part of our normal waking state, it becomes relatively effortless.  Our second attention can then run as if on autopilot, in the background of our mind, as we live everyday life.  Second attention is like applying an intention through being self-aware to witness our life unfolding.  Subsequently, our lives are enriched because we are more present to experiences and authenticity blossoms as we uncover our essential nature and special function.

Cultivating a second attention optimizes our decision-making capability by helping us to stay centered and to not over identify with our perceptions, which tend to conform to the contours of our beliefs.  We can make healthier choices and establish clearer intentions to direct our life’s journey and purpose as a consequence.  Developing a second attention can be extremely helpful when having to make important choices such as those associated with caregiving, advance care directive elections, and adapting to a new normal after major loss.

As a side note, one way of interpreting the decision-making process through engaging a second attention is that it enhances our ability to be better agents for change.  We each have the privilege and opportunity to make choices that narrow the gap between the way things are in our life and the way they could or ought to be.  Through one conceptual framework, narrowing the gap between the ‘Is’ and the ‘Ought’ of our lives and also of the world of fact is interpreted as being tied to our responsibility to make life choices/decisions that help us to make the world a better place for everyone not only ourselves.  As agents of free will, we have a responsibility to choose life options that help us to cancel out any misperceptions that maintain the ‘Is’ of the world thus releasing us to perceive things through a lens allowing true perception to enter into our mind.