Thursday 26 April 2012

Paying attention


I never really noticed or paid attention to birds until I married my wife. They were of limited if any interest to me. But marriage is a great clarifier. Less like a torch and more like floodlights, this key relationship illuminates large portions of personality. Quite soon I began to take an interest which eventually  became a delight in taking time to observe and enjoy the behaviour of birds in our garden. The current mission is to entice red bishops to visit on a regular basis. I didn’t choose to focus on birds like a telescope zooming in. I simply grew to enjoy them. My attention was changed in a way that involved my participation.

Biofocusing is about giving living attention (I don’t think you get another kind) the freedom it needs to work fruitfully. Somewhere between babyhood and adulthood, awareness is moulded by experience into patterns that stabilize into a sense of self and reality. Those patterns, which are entirely negotiable, are usually taken for granted until there’s a problem. Problems require solutions and biofocusing is a concept I’ve put together as a versatile tool, a bit like a Swiss knife, to free up awareness and consciousness.  I call it an active concept, because it’s something you do rather than merely think about. 

To get those red bishops landing, we’re looking for a landing area and a reason to land. We’ve got the plants they like to swing from, and the next step is the flat bird-feeder. Any ideas that will help, my contact details are in the website. 

To ponder: if your mind is free, is it focused or unfocused?