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Chasing Unicorns: Chapter 3, Dominatrix Theory, Part 2

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Tap cover, to read.

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 we became aware of awareness by learning Motion Picture Theory. We learned that the mind can only be aware of one thing at a time. But it shifts its awareness so quickly that we are under the illusion of being aware of many things at once. This is just like the still pictures of a motion picture that flash before our eyes at 24 frames per second, providing the illusion of motion. But we need more than awareness in order to think. We also need focus . . .

Dominatrix Theory, Part 2

Dominatrix Theory

Focus allows you to do your schoolwork while ogling the pretty girl sitting next to you. Focus allows you to drive your car with your knees while talking on your cell phone, reading a newspaper, and combing your mustache in the rear view mirror. Focus allows you to sit cross-legged in the dark, on the floor of your walk-in closet, while contemplating your navel and chanting, “Om Mani Padme Hum.”

Without focus you could not function. Your awareness would just be scanning everything in your environment over and over again, without paying special attention to any aspect of it. You would be in a trance-like state, aware of the All, but without any ability to do anything with the All. Now I know there are some people with religious motivations who would just love to enter that sort of state of mind. They might call it “completely letting go,” or “transcendence,” or “Nirvana,” or some such thing. And I must admit, this state of mind can be enjoyable (for reasons which will be made apparent later).

But it is not a practical state of mind. You must have and use your ability to focus in order accomplish anything (such as survival tasks, which keep your body alive). And you must have focus in order to satisfy your innate urge to explore and create. And where would you be in a strip-poker game, without focus? You could not win, but even if you did you could not enjoy your victory.

Focus adds a dimension to living that brings spikes of delightful happiness, along with episodes of terrible pain and misery. You might compare it to a dominatrix. Visit the dungeon of a dominatrix and you’ll see what I mean. She can make you tingle with joy. But she’ll also whip your ass something fierce from time to time. Especially when you’re not careful and you break her little rules.

For this reason, I call my general theory about focus, Dominatrix Theory. What a dominatrix can do is pretty close to what focus does. Dominatrix Theory states the following: Focus is a phenomenon of your mind that causes you to feel either pleasure or pain.

There are powerful concepts contained within Dominatrix Theory. More powerful than the strongest, longest leather bullwhip. When you submit your mind to this imposing theory, you will understand focus like you’ve never understood before. Yeow! So dress up in your best latex, and let’s take a closer look at focus.

Awareness, for all its flitting about, plays a major role in how you focus your attention. But just how does this fickle animal do this?

Awareness doesn’t just indiscriminately scan your senses for incoming stimuli. No, awareness discriminates. But it’s a good sort of discrimination, and has nothing to do with Jim Crow, male chauvinism, ageism, or any of that politically incorrect stuff.

Awareness dances a kind of dance, and plays favorites in its choice of dancing partners. It shifts from one stimulus to another, scanning everything going on around you. But when it finds a stimulus that it likes, it will shift to that stimulus more often than to others. This is just like what you do at a dance. You may like the idea of dancing with all the girls who show up. But you prefer to dance most often with the prettiest girls. And when you find the prettiest girl, you make a note to exchange partners for her more often than for any other.

Let’s leave the dance floor and look at this scientifically. When awareness finds a stimulus it likes, it returns to that stimulus more often than to other stimuli. Awareness cannot dwell on one stimulus for longer than an instant. But it can shift away to a different stimulus, and then immediately shift back to the one it was previously on. It’s kind of like how criminals behave. They’re always on the run from the law, so they can’t stay in any one place for very long. But they do return to the scene of the crime, from time to time.

[Feeling confused? Still don’t get it? Me, too. So tomorrow we’ll explore the intricate details of focus, and hopefully clear it all up and put everything into proper, uh, well, focus.]

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Categories: books, Series (Books): Chasing Unicorns

30 replies »

  1. Pingback: Chasing Unicorns: Chapter 3, Dominatrix Theory, Part 1 – Chasing Unicorns

  3. Multi-tasking is another word for focus I think. Its how you can text, cook and talk on the phone at the same time.

    Yes, I am still partially confused but I am sure that someone as clear headed and logical as you will clear it all up for me, no problem or…. just make me more confused. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

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  4. Well, part of your brain can go about the business of telling your heart to beat and stomach to digest tamales, and your diaphragm to work your lungs, and your eye lids to blink, and your parts not to wet your pants without you even being consciously aware of it all. So we do have some multi-tasking sub-processors in there, though they are not part of higher consciousness I suppose, though you consciousness can interrupt some of this and drive occasionally should you really want to wet your pants.

    Also, my hands can type what I am reading or thinking without me really willing them to and I often rub my feet together without thinking about it.

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  5. Pingback: Chasing Unicorns: Chapter 3, Dominatrix Theory, Part 3 – Chasing Unicorns

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