Awareness
Awareness is the universal solvent. We can’t intentionally change what we don’t know exists. To become aware of something, even without meaning to act on it in any other way, affects that thing. It becomes separated from the background, takes on features, limits. From the observer’s point of view, it comes into existence, and establishes its role in the environment. Many fantastical possibilities are eliminated. New possibilities branch off in very specific ways.
As a sign, we begin to sense it. It relates to other things, and sparks initial reactions. Soon, we can evaluate it and form judgments, which inform future actions.
Take for instance the realization that launched this series of essays. At some point, I became aware of myself as a thinking person. Later, I wondered how many of those thoughts were my own, rather than repetitions of things I’d heard. With my awareness lit up, examples began to leap out from unquestioned patterns of behavior. I saw errors in judgment, superficial opinions, stolen ideas, lazy reasoning, insensitive bluster, and outright mistakes. The mere act of becoming aware began the dissolution of those behaviors. I spoke with a little more care, and hesitated longer before speaking.
With that initial stage complete, I soon realized that there was more to what I call authentic living than just thought, and soon I became aware of feeling and action. Those, in turn, shifted under my attention. With the parts exposed, I was able to bring further awareness to each in turn. Noticing something has a way of making you aware of other things—especially those that are not that thing.
Each of these essays is a further elucidation. With every additional aspect we consider, we move more of the processes of perception under conscious scrutiny. Peirce’s signs offer an excellent framework for understanding how we take and make meaning. By suspending our habit of rushing to our pet signs—those of firstness, secondness, or thirdness—we gain a more complete awareness. Ultimately, that allows us more choice in how we shift our actions. Awareness is a prerequisite for free will.
How We Carve Out Awareness
OK, so then what is “awareness”?
For our purposes, I’ll define it as separating something from the undifferentiated background and bringing it to conscious attention. Attention can be directed consciously or unconsciously, and at many levels of both at once. We are always paying attention to something, usually many things, whether or not we realize it. Our bodies digest food, produce energy, and eliminate waste based on stimuli that never enter conscious thought. We notice, even in our blankest moments, that we exist, and that there are sights and sounds and objects all around.
When I speak of attention, what I’m really talking about is conscious attention. Are you lost in thought, or scanning the distance? Do you notice a pain in your body, or the press of a seat against you?
I prefer to think of our consciousness of attention as a gradient, rather than in crisp categories. It often hums along in a wavering stream, half-noticed.
For many people, the attention jerks from one thing to another with little reflection. Why did I look out that window? Why did that thought cross my mind? Often, the reason for the choice remains obscure. When we don’t choose the objects of our attention, or when we let ourselves be swayed from them, we lack awareness of both the external world and the self.
The word “attention” comes from a Latin root that means literally “to stretch toward.” So what stretches? We might think that it’s our five senses, directed at some source of information. That’s true, but we can also turn our attention inward to thoughts, feelings, and imagination. We might bring our focus to our hopes, or to our worries as skillfully as to a painting. When my keys are missing, my attention reaches for something absent in order to facilitate a search.
The direction of the attention isn’t neutral. There’s a value statement involved. We’ll prioritize things related to our survival, like growling bears and thirst. Having resolved that, our self-interest may turn it to a beautiful person, a song, or a delectable smell.
The attention isn’t passive, either. It receives sense impressions, but also evaluates them, and interacts with our environment. We don’t like certain people staring at us because we feel it as an act of intrusion, maybe even aggression. You might say that the direction of attention is an expression of the will, motivated by desire.
What we attend to is the self. I mean that literally. You are not the things you never think, feel, say, or do. When I take in signs from the room around me, I gain information about myself by placing myself in context. I’ll soon fit my future evaluations to those things I attend to most: reach for those metaphors, and fill my idle time with those thoughts. These objects populate my memory and imagination. I can only think of myself and the world in terms of things I’ve noticed. The things I pay attention to become the way I compose my identity and all my understanding of what I encounter.
If my attention is unconscious, diffuse, granted and removed at random, what can I hope to know? Who can I hope to become?
The Plural Awareness
There are as many levels of awareness as there are signs (Ten, according to Peirce and Merrell!). You can see how it gets tricky to pin down this term. Do I just need one? All of them? How about four? I think a foggy definition of such a slippery concept is fitting. But if I’m going to promote awareness, I need some standard.
Noticing the attention—however many signs it may be directed at—operates at a level one order of magnitude higher than simply paying some kind of attention. From here, attention itself can become an object of attention, to be sensed and evaluated. It’s still messy. By the time I attend to my attention, I’m really noticing a past object, as my actual attention is now directed at something new and presumably, just as mysterious to me.
But what I’ve gained is some conscious control over how I populate my world. I become aware of the signs which draw the outlines of my reality. An example might help.
Let’s say I have a habit of dismissing other people’s opinions out-of-hand. Just pretend. When I remain unaware, I probably make people feel belittled and angry. They’re less likely to want to share opinions with me, or to invite me over to play board games.
Once someone calls this habit to my attention, I can choose to direct my thoughts to the examples they gave, and my own memories of those behaviors. The very act of looking is likely to cause some kind of change, probably out of shame. By going over the habit, I see where it begins and ends, as distinct from other behaviors. I may see smaller patterns that make up part of it, and thus aware of them, examine them in turn. Maybe I sense it coming up only on topics that I feel a pressure or reputation to know things about, while I never bother arguing over the best way to paint fingernails. I might turn my attention to possible causes, and become aware that I place a high value on seeming smart.
Even if I decide to keep on acting the same way, I probably notice it now, and feel differently about it. My awareness has redirected my attention, which leads to new awareness, and new subjects for my attention—so on, forever. Perceiving something differently—or at all—makes it possible to change the way we think about it, feel it, and act on it.
If I want to improve my thinking, my emotional reactions, and my behavior, I can hope for a series of happy accidents. Barring that, I have to become aware of my current habits. I do this by directing attention to them. By becoming conscious of where I place my attention, I can begin to understand things like how I reason and communicate, how others react to me, and what signs and situations commonly thrust me into unflattering patterns. This basic awareness dissolves the bonds of these old structures and makes it possible to change them.
All that to say, if you don’t know it’s broke, you can’t fix it. There are many levels of awareness. In its most complete form, it encompasses experiencing something through all ten signs that make up firstness, secondness, and thirdness, and adjusting at all levels to new information. In a way, we can never be aware of something because the act of becoming aware divides the object from its background; a closer look divides it again into its parts, and those into their parts, and all their relationships.
But this dissolution allows us to separate what should move independently, throw out what doesn’t work, restructure, and above all, strengthen the habit of becoming aware.
Exercise 4
The attention isn’t just a shifting moment of interest. It’s you. There, you can see what matters most to you right now. Imagine that each object becomes a part of you, more so each time you settle on it. That’s how you know about yourself. That’s your world, and how you think of it. If that were true, are there things you would just as soon carve off like a wart and throw away?
Few of us will achieve constant mastery over our attention. It will wander here and there, and a little wandering can be a good thing. Luckily, one of the most powerful things we can do is not to direct it, but remove it. If you’re near-broke and saddled with debt, the first step is to stop wasting money.
1A. At least one a day, preferably more, notice when your attention has turned to something you don’t like. Redirect it somewhere better.
This can be as simple as realizing you’re mindlessly scrolling on your phone, worrying over a distant and minor problem, or glancing at a bright advertisement. Find something else to turn to, even if it’s just to clear your mind, take a breath, and look around for something that you would rather have as part of yourself.
Questions to Become Aware of
Take some time over the next week to think up or jot down your answers to the following questions. Don’t rush. These are designed to help you understand the way your awareness works. There are no right or wrong answers. The goal is merely to cast a light on your current tendencies.
1B. Which sense is your primary way of experiencing and thinking about the world: sight, hearing, or touch/feeling? Rank them.
We use all three, but if it isn’t obvious which you prefer, you may find clues in your favorite expressions. For example, do you more often say things like, “I see your point,” “I hear you,” or “I feel that”?
2. Of the remaining senses—smell and taste—which do you connect with more?
3. Do you have an inner monologue? (A voice that occasionally narrates certain thoughts and experiences in your head)
4. Can you imagine visual images in your mind when they aren’t present physically? How well?
5. Can you imagine sounds in your mind when they aren’t present physically? How well?
6. Can you imagine physical bodily sensations in your mind when they aren’t present physically? How well?
7. Can you imagine smells in your mind when they aren’t present physically? How well?
8. Can you imagine specific tastes in your mind when they aren’t present physically? How well?
9. What percentage of the day do you estimate you spend thinking about or dealing with the present? The past? The future?
10. What percentage of the day do you estimate you spend dealing with external stimuli (things happening in front of you) versus internal stimuli (thoughts, daydreams, etc.)?
11. Do you consider yourself to have a good memory? In what ways do you remember things? (e.g. images, sounds, sensations, patterns, relationships, etc.)
12. How vivid is your imagination? How well can you create complex scenes or stories that you’ve never experienced?
13. Rank the following in order of how much you trust the source: hearing a statement from an expert, reasoning something to be true, personally experiencing something. Would the order change in different situations, or is it constant?
14. How good are you at reading people’s body language? What about tone of voice?
15. Who are the five people or sources of information that you trust most?
16. Who are the five people or sources of information that you trust least?
17. List in order the five things that you spend the most minutes per day paying attention to (e.g. TV, books, phone, repairing cars, how I look, etc.).
18. Name five things you pay little or no attention to that you would like to spend more time with.