This is the latest installation of a 27-part series, featuring my book, Chasing Unicorns. To read the previous installation, CLICK THIS LINK. For the next post in this series, CLICK THIS LINK. To start at the beginning, CLICK THIS LINK. To read the entire book at once, tap the book cover. Thanks for reading!

RECAP: Yesterday you tried to trip me up with a stupid, ridiculous question I didn’t have the answer to. Well, actually, it was a pretty good question. So in this chapter I will teach you a lesson for doing that, by introducing you to a dominatrix. The question was, “Is it possible to focus on a change, to the exclusion of other changes, and still enjoy yourself?” The dominatrix will address the issue of focus, and boy will you be sorry. But first there’s something else we must deal with . . .

Dominatrix Theory, Part 1

Motion Picture Theory

Before we get into a discussion about focus, we have to learn about awareness. So let’s go to the movies. Let’s discuss something that I call Motion Picture Theory. Bear with me. It’s a good movie. It won several Academy Awards.

Motion Picture Theory addresses how awareness works in your mind. In other words, it explains how you are aware of things.

Awareness is a fickle animal. It’s constantly moving about from one thing to another, like a packrat in a can of marbles. Ever take your wife shopping for a new appliance, only to find her unable to decide which color she wants? That’s kind of like awareness. Always moving back and forth, around and around, and never ever stopping and staying on just one thing.

But awareness probably has a better excuse than your wife has, for being fickle. You see, the problem it faces is the same problem detectives have when you come up with a good alibi. You can’t be in more than one place at a time. The same is true for awareness. It is impossible—in fact it defies all known reality outside the dimension of science fiction—for your awareness to be in two places at once. This talent is reserved only for wives shopping for appliances.

Don’t believe me? I know, I say a lot of things in this book that challenge convention. But has convention ever made you happy? It has?! I said “convention,” not “conventions.” I’ve attended a few myself.

I suppose you won’t be satisfied without proof.

Okay, well then, you can see what I mean by donning your white laboratory coat and conducting a little scientific experiment. Got your coat on? All right, now just sit there on your laboratory stool and close your eyes. Now try as hard as you can to think two different thoughts at the exact same time. That’s two different thoughts. For instance, one thought can be a memory of you pulling your little red wagon when you were five years old. And the other thought can be a calculation of the circumference of a frightened blowfish. It doesn’t matter what the thoughts are, as long as they are significantly unrelated.

Unless you have superhuman powers beyond even that of The Flash, you’ll notice how impossible this is to do. What you will also notice is that your mind will shift its focus back and forth, from one thought to the other, at rapid speed, in its attempt to process both thoughts at the same time. Either that or you’ll notice your mind going blank from an overload and smoke pouring out of your ears.

Thinking two thoughts at the exact same time simply cannot be done. And that’s because no matter how hard you try, you cannot force your awareness to be in more than one place at a time.

And yet this seems counterintuitive. Wherever you are at this moment, you are probably aware of many things in your environment. You’re aware of what your eyes are seeing, your ears are hearing, your nose is smelling, your tongue is tasting, your body is feeling, and your brain is thinking. And it all seems to be going on at once. But it isn’t. It’s all an illusion.

Sucker!!! You’ve been punked big time!

The awareness within your mind is the greatest magician of all time. Even Harry Houdini would have to bow to this magician. Awareness plays a game of illusion. It gives you the illusion that you’re aware of many things at once, when actually you are only aware of one thing at a time.

So how does awareness do this? At the risk of breaking the Magician’s Code, and being sawed in half by an irate prestidigitateur, I am going to reveal how it pulls off this stunning trick. But watch closely, because the hand can be quicker than the eye!

The secret can be expressed in one word: Speed. Your awareness moves at lightning-fast speed. It’s like that phantom lover you imagine your spouse has. He or she always manages to jump out the bedroom window the exact moment you open the front door of your house.

Awareness moves so quickly from one sensory input to another, that it provides you with the illusion of being aware of many things at once. It’s that simple. And this is why I call it Motion Picture Theory.

Motion pictures operate under the same principle as awareness. A motion picture is actually a series of still pictures that are flashed before your eyes at a rapid pace (24 frames per second at your local theater). These still pictures provide the illusion of motion as they pass before the lighted lens of the projector.

Your awareness does something similar. It captures still moments of input coming from your senses and “flashes” them before your consciousness. But it does this so rapidly it seems as if you are aware of many things at once. And it seems as if these things are constantly changing, even though each moment of input is a still moment. Thus you experience the illusion of a continuous flow of the present moment, within an environment consisting of multiple stimuli that seem to be affecting you all at once.

Whew! That’s very technical. So if you’re still a little confused, let me break it down for you using the same teaching method employed by Monday Night Football. Let’s use slow-motion, and watch how awareness would work if it wasn’t operating at its usual lightning-fast speed.

Let’s say that your awareness starts with visual input. And so you are able to see a still image. But while you are viewing the still image, you cannot hear, smell, taste, feel or think anything. Then, in slow-motion speed, your awareness shifts to sound input. While it’s there you hear a constant tone. But now you cannot see anything. Nor can you smell, taste, feel or think anything. Then your awareness shifts to your olfactory nerve. So now you can smell, but you are still blind, and also deaf. Nor can you taste, feel, or think anything. And so on and so forth as your awareness shifts from one sensory input to another. Note that while it is aware of any one particular sensory input, it cannot be aware of any other sensory input, or of any changes to a sensory input.

Now aren’t you glad your awareness moves at lightning-fast speed? Think of how impatient you’d get if life somehow got stuck in perpetual slow-mo. Just the same, the price you pay for such speed is that you fall under the illusion that you can be aware of many sensory inputs at once.

Awareness puts all of these little sensory inputs together at I- don’t-know-how-many billions of frames per second, that it does something to the equivalent of playing a real fancy, hi-tech motion picture for you. This motion picture is better than any 3-D flick or smellevision show you can watch or sniff. It’s ultra-high tech, with special effects at the highest ethereal levels the human mind is capable of attaining. What did I just say? Really I’m not sure. I’m just trying to get across to you that awareness is one amazing miraculous feature of your mind, that deserves a big thumbs-up from any movie critic.

But movies are not just about awareness. They’re also about focus. Focus also has a priority in a movie theater. After all, you can’t watch a movie if the lens on the projector is not properly focused.

Focus is real important stuff. Think about it. Just where would we be without it?

[Tomorrow we will learn about focus, from a dominatrix. Pay attention, or the lesson you learn may really sting.]

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