Untrained attention habituates to stimuli and as a result becomes passive. We can introduce variety as a way of keeping our attention active until it is strong enough to remain in a permanently active state. The seven levels of variety:
We feel inattentive, dull, and bored. A quality of mundane repetition in life evokes a sense of being on autopilot. Life is drained of interest, meaning, and any sense of awe. We find ourselves waiting until the next experience catches our attention. Increasing pressure, intensity, and drama are needed in order to attract our attention. We are unable to keep our attention on something without being distracted, and we are unable to lift our attention to focus on other things when we are done.
A pattern of stronger attention at the beginning is followed by diminishing returns. There is a charge when the attention has been “grabbed.” We are looking to develop that level of charge in attention that, when evolved, is steady and continuous without either diminishing nor requiring external input to sustain. We may have settled into entirely passive attention that is low-grade and slack.
When desire breaks through this low-grade attention, it adds an active element to the mix. This active element will seek out novelty and intensity as it is still somewhat weak but hungry. Led by a desire to consume experiences, people, places, and things, it will seek outside of itself. A cycle of consumption occurs where something initially appears shiny. Then, the shininess diminishes until it no longer has power to hold our attention. It becomes a burden, an obligation, or something to be discarded. In this cycle, new input is constantly needed from the outside, only to be discarded later.
Many fail to realize the appearance of bright and shiny at the beginning is the experience of the attention being made active through novelty and then going passive as it lacks the “muscle” to hold itself up. The charge felt at the onset of something new can be indefinitely sustained, but not through external stimuli even when available in a constant stream of new and exciting. There will always be a rise, a peak, a diminishing, a cessation, and a seeking that will create an unstable attention accompanied by an underlying sense of desperation and fundamental insufficiency.
We can build our attention here in two ways. The first is to extend the enjoyment we experience with what we have, through digestion and acknowledgment. This shifts our attention from seeking to being, landing us in the present moment, which is where all gratification occurs. The seeking mind, the mind that simply wants release, will run over the current experience with the desperation of someone who is starving—because the attention is, in fact, starving.
The seeking mind lacks the capacity to metabolize and can only take in the quick hit of something new. Once we have settled into appreciating what we have through acknowledgment, we begin the next step of developing the subtle mind that is looking to feed on variety.
When we turn off the seek-and-consume mind and settle into a sense of basic sufficiency, we open a more nuanced form of noticing. Rather than needing the hard and dense experience of external reality, we begin to draw our attention to notice internal reality. We start with simply noticing the overall feeling in our body.
We notice the feeling of having our sitz bones on the chair, or the feeling of fabric on our skin. We notice sounds. We have downshifted from needing to draw in new experiences to finding newness in the experiences that are already here. The body feels a surge of power as the energy that was formerly expended on chasing experience is now able to stay in the body, helping the body meet its needs in the here and now.
We then dive further into ourselves, noticing our feelings. We allow our attention to move where there is a strong feeling or sensation. We feel for the heat, light, vibration, sharpness, or softness of it. As we focus, we notice whether it feels like we are descending or ascending. With something to focus on, our attention enlivens, now powered by the same energy that was formerly spent seeking. This yields a feeling of steady fulfillment.
We draw our attention even deeper into ourselves and notice more delicate nuances, the movements and rhythms of sensation. What happens when we move our attention from one location to the next? We will find that not only do external stimuli become less interesting, they become a distraction from the most interesting thing there is—this unceasing focus on the ocean of internal experience. This is how our habit of external consumption falls away, and along with it goes the feeling of insufficiency. There is more than enough to keep the attention occupied with something that grows it, rather than erodes or merely manages it.
The final level of variety is marked by a steady sensation of gratification and little need for external stimuli. A permanent baseline of ambient attention is focused on sensation. The mind feels switched on as it is in the optimal position, open with curious interest in a way that it grows more complex and strengthens in the process.