It could be said that your world radiates out from some hypothetical centre within you and extends as far as the limits of your senses take you. At some point, your world fades away into the horizon. Within the immediate limits of your world, you must also limit which of your five sense accesses an experience, so what you perceive is never a full representation of an event. This is why the Bhagavad Gita distinguishes between consciousness and the contents of consciousness. Pure consciousness is always refined by factors within ourselves, and no matter how subtle is the tinge, the new experience is automatically transformed within the established lineage and itself becomes one of its contents—another nexus of consciousness that gathers around it the opinions, feelings, and distorted perceptions that support your fabricated personal identity. Most people spend at least half their waking hours simulating their experiences instead of living them. With their inattention to the facts, their purely simulated reality drives their feelings and emotions in unexpected directions. So you really need to pay attention to ordinary things without distorting their facts. Attention is different from concentration. While concentration excludes all else to the object of focus, attention is full and total awareness that excludes nothing. You cease being the observer of things, including yourself and develop greater sensitivity to what is happening in the moment—the note of tension in the voice of a loved one, the source of the feelings of irrational anger, guilt, and loneliness as they arise, or even merely appreciating the sunrise in all its simplicity. Through meditation you learn how to live from moment to moment instead of a reality that is hijacked by your own thoughts. Your intention is simply to let go of your notions of how things “should” be. When you have a worthy intention like this in mind, you don’t need a contraption or method to reign in your focus, instead you develop a sensitivity to the present moment as it unfolds around you.

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