Talk: Introducing Attention Management

This is a recording of any Insight Timer Live I hosted on the 11th of March. It is a gentle introduction to a workshop I am running on the app in April 2022 on Attention Management. Discover how meditation is the key ‘technology’ when it comes to controlling our so-called ‘monkey mind’. This talk includes some short meditations so pull over if you are driving.

Transcript

So welcome everybody to this Insight Time Alive.

I'm Tom Evans.

Just let me know whether you can hear me okay?

I hope so.

Fantastic.

Thank you Marita,

Thank you,

Raj and Suzanne.

Loud and clear.

Lovely.

Thanks for everyone that's come along today.

I think we've got about 200,

300 people coming along today so we'll just give everyone a bit of time to assemble.

And thanks for everyone for making the time today.

Well so good to see everyone here.

Let me just give you a bit of background to this live.

For some time now Insight Timer have been trialling workshops and mentoring and several people that have been on these Insight Timer Lives have asked me when I do a workshop.

In fact I got invited by Insight Timer to put one together which is going to run in April.

Three dates in April,

Three two o'clocks,

The 8th,

The 15th and the 22nd.

And the subject which I proposed to Insight Timer was Attention Management which as you'll discover in this session is slightly different from Time Management.

In fact there's another session in two weeks time on the 25th I think.

It's called Can I Have Your Attention?

And this is all about the things that grab our attention.

And so anyway,

The workshop is running in April.

It is a paid for event.

The fee is $99 but for everyone that's on this call I've got a special discount code which I can share at the end of the call with you.

If you've got any questions as we go along do ask away.

And what I want to just talk about today is just this whole concept of attention.

And I got into this several years ago before I unexpectedly became a meditation guide on Insight Timer in 2015.

Before that I thought I was an author who had some meditations on the side.

I thought the meditations were like accessories to my books.

But at the time I was funding my own writing by being an author's mentor.

In fact my first book was about how you clear writer's block.

And I wrote,

I worked with lots of people,

Became a specialist really,

An expert in clearing writer's block.

And what I noticed in every single occasion it was actually a life block masquerading as a writer's block.

Sometimes a fear,

Sometimes a concern that this person might be ridiculed if they wrote a book or they weren't good enough to write the book and that sort of thing.

And what I discovered is the people I was working with,

They're absolutely creative about being uncreative.

There's a number of things they've come up with as excuses.

The classic one that we do as an author is that we serve other people first before we do our own creative task.

Or sometimes you do your paying client work before you do your speculative creative writing and what have you.

And I discovered that actually when I inverted that,

If I started being creative first and then doing client work second,

I got into a much better flow.

One of the reasons for that is I'm a morning person and I found that it's much easier for me to retain my attention on the creative thing I was working on if I slid from meditation into the creative task.

But I noticed that people I was working with were incredibly creative about not getting on with their own creativity.

So people would be looking at emails,

Social media,

Making a cup of tea and generally becoming a busy fool at doing everything else but the thing that they committed to doing.

I discovered a few techniques around that and I'll share a couple with you just now.

But what I'd like you to do right now,

I purposely widened my camera.

So I normally zoom in a little bit more than this.

I've widened the camera as you can see a bit more of my office stroke studio.

And I'd like you to tune into what grabs your attention visually.

So in the field of vision,

What's the thing that grabs your attention?

A guitar,

Thank you.

The lava lamp,

I found it the other day,

Specifically for this.

The clock is actually going round,

But there is something a bit unusual about it.

And the plate is just a blanket covering up a box I've not unpacked since I moved into this office nearly a year ago.

The camera on the tripod is actually a telescope.

Yes,

The clock is a backward clock.

So that's why you think it's stuck at the wrong time.

It's actually five past two right now,

But it's going backwards.

I normally switch it off by the way because it's got quite a loud tick.

And some of my older meditations,

You might find this annoying tick on them is because I forgot to switch the clock off,

But I've left it on for now.

The wooden background,

Very good.

They're actually soundproof panels,

Would you believe.

So everything that we pay,

Everything that we see,

Has got almost like a story behind it.

The guitar was something I picked up when I was 30.

That's 34 sun orbits ago.

I've got that guitar.

It's still going well.

It's my favourite guitar.

I learned how to play guitar,

Learned how to read music from scratch at that time,

Which was great.

So the question I asked was what visually grabs your attention.

So loads of things.

There's the clock there,

There's the guitar.

There's actually a lyre on the wall there.

A couple of microphones here.

I've got the main microphone,

Which is here.

And just below it,

I've got a sub microphone that goes into my iPad,

My spare iPad,

So I can record the session and then upload it next week,

Just in case anyone's concerned about that.

But now what I'd like you to do is I will stop talking for a while and I'd like you to pay attention for what is in your audio spectrum.

What can you hear that you didn't hear when I was talking?

I love that Mary Jo,

Your coffee pot perking and birds in my background.

Interesting,

Isn't it?

There's a book I read ages ago by a professor,

Amit Goswami,

Or before I come to that term,

I want you just to tune in to what you're feeling right now.

What feeling is running round in your neuropathy right now?

So loads of things there.

Anxiety,

Anticipation,

Excitement,

Waking alive with a smile.

What a great way to start the day.

And a mixture of emotions,

Anxiety and gratitude and quite a few curious people,

Which is kind of interesting.

So,

Yeah,

This quote from a book by Professor Amit Goswami,

A book called The Self-Aware Universe,

And I've been very fortunate to have interviewed him three times for my podcast and actually to have met him also in London once.

The quote is from another quantum physicist,

David Boehm,

B-O-H-M,

And he said,

If we concentrate on the content of thought,

We lose sight of the direction in which the thought is heading.

If we concentrate on the direction of a thought,

We lose sharpness in its content.

And I read that book probably about 2008,

2009,

And that really set me off on this journey to meditation,

My own meditation practice and,

Lastly,

Also then helping other people.

And what I did,

Because I'm an engineer,

I would deconstruct other people's meditations to work out how they worked.

And obviously,

A place like Insight Time is brilliant for that because there's so many examples.

So you can actually hear things that do work.

You can hear things that don't work so well and all that kind of stuff.

But I kind of noticed there are four ways to meditate.

Now,

And many meditations use a mix of them.

I always use about two or three in my meditations.

And they all go back to this David Boehm quote,

Is if you think about the thing you're thinking about,

The thought you were having gets replaced by the thought you're just having.

So,

For example,

You're that author being mentored by someone like me trying to write a book,

And you're trying to focus on the book,

But your head goes to fears about how you'll be perceived when the book is out there,

Or worries of how you'll have time to publish it or the money to publish it,

Or your thoughts might go back to a conversation you had a day ago that didn't go so well.

You lose focus on the now.

And the great thing about meditation,

About we're all in this lovely community together,

This meditation community,

Is we're tapped into the one tool that will really help you focus your attention,

And that's meditation.

So I want to take you through a little guided meditation.

Yes,

So there's four ways to meditate,

And you'll hear them a lot in my meditations.

You'll hear them a lot in other people's meditations.

And what they all do is allow us to make the mind go quiet,

And if any thoughts that come up that we don't want,

To be able to deal with them and make them go quiet.

In fact,

I came up with a phrase based on the research I was doing at the time with Ahmed Ghazwami and other people called the quantum collapse of thought,

The idea that thoughts like energy,

They're quanta,

And they can exist in one state or the other.

They can be on or they can be off.

And so these techniques I'm just going to share with you now are great ways of calming the mind,

Reducing that anxiety,

And actually getting to this quiet place where your creative juices can just flow through you and from you.

So the first thing we do,

You'll hear this a lot in meditations,

Is breathe.

We've got to do it anyway.

So we use the breath to focus the mind,

And we do this very simply.

The first thing I'll do is I'll put a conscious thought into your mind that we're going to do five in and out breaths together.

A really important thing is now,

If you lose count,

You're doing it right.

So we can't hold that thought and another thought at the same time.

So if you're trying to think about counting your breath,

But also focusing on the breath itself,

You will lose count.

And that's a really good thing.

So don't feel ever,

If you lose count in a meditation or you get distracted,

You're doing it wrong,

It means you kind of do it,

You're doing it right.

Okay,

So what we do is we breathe and take a big deep breath so your belly expands,

And then on the next breath,

Let all the stale air out of your body and just repeat that five times.

Just one more.

What I'd like you to do now is continue to breathe in and out,

But start to pay attention not to the in or the out breath,

But the small gap between the in and the out,

And the small gap between the out and the in.

And very specifically,

While you're doing this,

And we'll say normally seven times,

But I'll lose count as you might,

It's very specifically,

If you find your attention wavers away from that gap between the in and the out or the out and the in,

And a thought comes in,

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

That thought might be something trying to grab your attention,

That could be a good thing.

If however,

It's a thought about what you're having for supper,

Or something that didn't go so well yesterday,

Just say to that thought,

Wouldn't mind if it goes quiet.

Just try that now.

So focus on the gap between the in and the out and the out and the in.

We'll do that normally for seven times.

Just one more.

And remember,

This session is not about me telling you how to do this to get it right or wrong.

Your thoughts might have been attracted by the birds in the background again,

Or the ticking of the clock and you may have noticed now the clock actually has progressed,

But it's gone for 10 minutes round in the wrong direction,

Being a backward clock.

So the breath is a really nice thing to tune into,

Apart from anything else.

When you breathe in and out with your diaphragm,

It also energizes the neurons in your whole physiology,

It's good for you.

It also energizes the neurons in the brain too,

So it's a great way to pump prime our creative juices and the creative flow.

And I've got loads of meditations that do spinal breaths and that kind of stuff you can tune into.

There's one on the up called the inspirational breath,

Fantastic breathing technique to do to get creative ideas or creative seeds in.

The next thing you find a lot in meditation is the use of a mantra,

Repeated phrase.

I mean classically if you saw somebody meditating in a film,

It's pretty dull to try and do that in a film,

So you'd have them chanting because it sounds like some of them would be sitting cross-legged on the floor and all that kind of stuff.

There might be some gongs going on in the background.

And there's loads of really good,

Amazing Sanskrit chants and various fantastic chants from some great teachers.

But again,

Because I'm an engineer,

I love my chants and my mantras to mean and do something.

So one of my first meditations,

In fact the first meditation I put on the app was called Be Calm,

And in there is a mantra.

And on the in-breath you say internally the word be,

And on the out-breath you say the word calm.

And many of the Sanskrit mantras mean something.

I use one called Mona Oha which predates Sanskrit,

Goes to the light language of the Elohim,

And Mona Oha means I trust.

It's a fantastic mantra.

But we're going to do just now the Be Calm mantra together.

And again I want you to notice when you say the word be internally on your in-breath and the word calm on the out-breath,

How it has the effect of calming the mind.

And if you find thoughts come in,

You'll lose track of the mantra.

And if you stick to the mantra,

It has the effect of keeping the thoughts at bay.

So just try that for five times.

This is not to get into a mental state,

It's just to experience the singularity of thought,

The quantum collapse of thought.

So be on the in-breath and calm on the out-breath.

And if you feel brave,

Because I can't hear you,

You can try it and do it out loud.

Who's to hear and who's to care?

Just one more.

Be calm.

So we've got the breath,

We've got the mantra.

The next thing you can meditate on is thought itself.

And this is where the quantum collapse of thought comes into its own.

So if you think about thought,

That thought gets replaced by you now thinking about the thought.

And the way that I do this is a technique I learned from the Barefoot Doctor many,

Many years ago.

And I think that even Russell's not with us anymore sadly,

But I hope he's watching down and I thank him for all the things he taught me many,

Many years ago.

So what you do is you put your tongue to the roof of the mouth.

And you can do this with your eyes closed or your eyes open,

Probably easier with your eyes closed.

And then you just imagine that your consciousness moves about two inches up from the tip of your tongue and about three inches back.

And when you've located that point,

You just relax your tongue.

And you imagine you're looking at the back of your eyeballs.

So you imagine that you're actually becoming an observer of your thoughts.

And one of the best ways to make a thought collapse to zero is to talk to it.

And what you do is a thought comes in,

You ask it,

Who sent it?

For what purpose?

And why?

So just sit with your thoughts for,

Let's say a minute or so.

And as thoughts come in,

Just ask them,

Who sent them?

For what purpose?

And why?

Just another 10 seconds.

And just come back into the room.

Maybe if anything came in for you there,

I'd be interested if you could share that in the chat.

Another question we can ask ourselves,

I won't do it just now,

But you can hear it in some of my other meditations.

You can ask this of yourself is,

If you're actually observing your thoughts and someone is doing the talking,

Who's doing the listening?

And again,

This is a lovely hypnotic question to ask yourself,

Because there's no real right answer necessarily for that.

And you can also ask this,

Is that thought inside your head?

And this is especially true.

Oh,

Yeah,

Emotions and images,

That's a great question.

We are going to come up on that in the attention management course,

We'll come on to that a hell of a lot,

Where thoughts come from,

And how not all thoughts and necessarily what we think of as our own,

And indeed generated in the head.

So when people have got this writer's block,

For example,

Often it's a fear which is buried in the in the lower mind centres,

And it percolates up just as a feeling and as an emotion.

And we're all wired slightly differently.

So some people are very awash with their emotions.

An artist will think in pictures,

For example,

A sommelier might be thinking about the smell of a wine,

A chef will be very clear gustatory,

You know,

And we can develop those super sensibilities as well.

And that's one of the things that I'm going to be doing in the actual attention management workshop,

Not denigrating those feelings and emotions,

But actually using them and channel them and using them for creative good.

So,

Yeah,

When images,

Emotions pop up,

The first thing to do when things pop up,

Out of the blue,

Inverted commas,

Is to thank them for showing up.

And then you can also interrogate them.

You can say,

You know,

Why is this showing up right now?

Is there any more insight that you could reveal to me?

And again,

You're asking this question of someone or something.

And I'll go into in the attention management workshop,

Who or what these things in the entity's mind will be.

So we've done meditation on the breath meditation,

Our mantra meditation on thought.

There's a fourth thing you can meditate on.

And that's a thing.

So we can do this two ways.

We can you can meditate on one of the objects you see behind me,

The guitar,

The clock,

The lava lamp,

Telescope,

What have you,

Or you can stare in your own room,

There might be behind your computer,

Or your iPad or your iPhone or your tablet or your your smartphone,

There might be a spot on the wall,

I've got some black screws on the wall here I'm going to use.

And the other thing we can meditate on is a sound.

So I've got a singing bowl just here.

So let's just start by meditating on the sound of the singing bowl.

Bring your attention to the sound and notice how your thoughts stop.

And now pay attention to the decay of the singing bowl.

Lovely little thing to get into that softness to stay with.

But now I'd like you to find a spot either on in the screen behind me,

Or on your wall somewhere.

And make it the central focus of your attention.

And now become aware of what's above it,

Below it and to the left and right but keeping that spot at the central focus of your attention.

And if any internal chatter comes in,

The monkey mind fires up,

Just bring your attention back to that spot.

And you can widen your attention even wider so you can go higher so you can always see the ceiling,

Become aware of the floor and the walls either side,

But keeping your attention right on that central spot in your vision.

So let's just come back into the room.

So that's a quick overview of stuff that's in many of my meditations,

But specifically about how about the singularity,

The singular nature of our attention.

So one of the reasons we can become inefficient is if our attention goes away from the thing that we're working on,

Concentrating on.

What I do in the morning,

People ask me how long do I meditate for every day,

And the answer is about 24 hours.

Because I'm also,

When you're in that dream you stay always,

I make a note of my dreams,

And often I can dream whole chapters of books or a whole meditation and that kind of thing,

Especially on demand.

And what I tend to do is stay in the meditative state pretty much all the time,

So I meditate in the morning formally and then go slide straight into some writing or some recording or creating some music or that kind of thing.

I stay in that state.

But the other thing I do that's really important is I fix creative dates in my diary when I'm doing my stuff,

Not working on client stuff or delivering IT lives or working in the garden or doing some DIY.

This is dates where I'm going to meet with my creations,

And what they tend to do is just rock up either a day or an hour before just when I need them.

And it's a lovely way to be.

Just one more thing I want you to do as well,

Even go back into that state where you're looking at a spot on the wall or you're listening to a sound.

I'll do this maybe with the singing bowl.

Do I have a good dream interpretation book?

I wouldn't recommend dream interpretation books because they tend to be someone else's interpretation and interpretations are very personal,

But you can listen to a meditation of mine called Hypnagogia extended,

And that's a great way to get into a place where you can drive your dreams.

But when we listen to something like this,

Just tune in and tune out.

What I'd like you to do is to touch your thumb and your middle finger together on each hand.

This is known as a mudra,

But it's also an anchor.

So just before you start a creative task,

What you can do is you can anchor that sense again and it will immediately take you back to that meditative state.

It's quite a cool technique to do just to get you into that meditative state.

It's a good thing to do as well if someone angers you or you get slightly irked by something.

Just touch your thumb and middle finger together and it takes you back to that state.

Again,

You can add breathing to that and all that kind of stuff.

Now,

I want to talk about this.

This is quite a brief live today.

I said I need about 30 minutes.

I'm going to go slightly over.

I want to talk about what's on this in this workshop.

First off,

I've got another IT live in two weeks time and it's called Can I Have Your Attention?

Do pop back to that if you like.

I'm going to talk about the different things that get your attention,

Like when images and emotions pop up,

For example.

Where do they come from?

What sort of source are they?

That's another half hour talk.

But in the workshop itself,

I'm going to talk about three or four different time zones.

Now,

Time zones didn't really exist until international travel and transcontinental railway journeys emerged.

There was no reason for it.

So everywhere had local time.

There's still a few places where the time zones aren't one hour,

But they're half an hour.

Time zones,

I think,

Came around about 1884.

I'm in GMT.

What I'm going to do on the course is we're going to introduce you to three states.

One is EMT,

Which is extended me time.

That's that lovely zone you can get into where time seems to expand.

And your created task gets done in the time that you've allocated to it.

And when I'm in the EMT stage,

Most of the time,

I can write something like three or five thousand words in an hour,

That kind of thing.

There's another state which actually relates to that note mass about images and emotions.

And it's called IMT.

That's inner mind time.

And that's the time zone that the largely the lower mind centres enter.

There's another very exciting time zone called OMT,

Which is outer mind time.

And that's all time,

Past,

Present and future.

And this is the collective consciousness.

So when you start to tap into that,

You can not only tap into the past,

But you can also tap into the future as well.

And one of the techniques I taught many,

Many authors is how to tap into the future version of you.

Who knows the words you haven't written yet,

Which is kind of a cool thing to do.

Then the final thing I'm going to explore is a thing called JIT,

Which is just in time.

And this is a really lovely state to be in.

It's where you're trusting the universe using that mantra,

Mona Oha.

And all the most perfect things turn up just when you need them.

Often they turn up.

You don't realise how good they are at the time.

But you don't even notice till afterwards how perfect that was.

And when we get into a JIT state,

Just in time state,

Lots of our worries absolutely dissipate.

It takes a lot of trust.

It takes a lot of practice.

Like meditation takes practice.

But if we combine those four states,

The EMT,

The IMT,

The OMT and the JIT together,

We start to live a blissful and charmed life.

And a good example of that is this workshop.

I didn't plan to do it this year.

It turns out to be just perfect.

I didn't know when I set it up that Insight Time were also going to offer discounts.

And I'm offering.

.

.

There's only a few of these.

I think they've put 25 aside.

I'm not sure the actual numbers because a few have gone already.

But they'll be available on a first come,

First serve basis for everyone that's on this call who listens to the recording.

I'll give you the code.

It's ATMAN50.

A T T M A N 50.

If you put that in on checkout,

Then you get access to the workshop at 50% off.

And I'll just put in this URL,

Which I got told off for last time.

So hopefully the IT police won't tell me off again this time.

If you type in www.

Tomevans.

Co.

Atman,

That will read out straight to the course.

You can check out on the app and you can also check out on the web.

On the app,

I couldn't find out where to put the code in.

It's right in the top.

I'll just do the dates in a minute,

Marsha.

Thank you.

Interesting how my attention went straight to the chat room.

And that's another important thing we do in these lives to be attentive to what you're saying and also to what's coming in.

So your attention has to flip between the two of them.

So when we do that,

I've now lost my thread.

Isn't that interesting?

So it'll come back.

So I'll do the dates and it'll come back.

So the 8th of April,

2 p.

M.

Then a week after that,

The 15th of April.

And after that,

The 22nd of April.

And there'll be a recording made available to it.

So you can't make one of them for any reason.

You'll get access to the recording.

I'm also making my book,

Managing Time Mindfully,

Which is in four quarters.

Immediately when you sign up,

You get access to the first quarter and then you get access to the other three quarters.

Oh,

Yes.

That's right.

When you go to the app,

You can't find the.

.

.

It's really difficult to find where you put the code.

It's right in the top right.

There's a little arrow.

It says Apply Code and then the code window comes up.

I just found it easier on the web to do it.

OK.

Anyone in the community here maybe going through a difficult side of emotions,

Feelings,

Thoughts,

Sending virtual hugs.

Thank you so much for that,

Liz.

It's a kind of tough time at the moment,

Isn't it?

Oh,

The web is the Internet.

Sorry about that,

Cynthia.

And if you type in that URL that I put in there,

Which I'll put in again for you,

Www.

Tomephens.

Co.

Atman That takes you to the web interface you can check out on the web.

We had to log in if you're not logged in already with your same login that you use for the app or what have you.

So that's attention management in a nutshell.

The aim of attention management is twofold.

One,

So you become much more creative.

You get much more done of high quality in a reduced amount of time.

But the main reason is that it allows us to pay attention for those signs and serendipities that allow us to live a charmed and magical and blissful life.

That's what the workshop is all about.

And so hope to see you all in a couple of weeks time.

And I hope I see as many of you as possible on the workshop in April.

Stay safe.

Well,

Let's hope that we we have a world we can live in in two weeks time,

If not tomorrow.

Things don't go too crazy.

And yeah,

What a crazy time.

Just been through a pandemic and now we've got nearly a third World War.

What's going on?

At least we're in a community of like minds when our aims are peaceful and pure.

And I'm very blessed to be here doing this with you all.

So have a great weekend,

Everybody.

And hope to see as many of you on the course.

The course,

By the way,

Is run over Zoom,

Which is much better than this sort of interface where I can't you can see me,

But I can't see you.

And hope to see you in a couple of weeks time.

Take care,

Everybody.

Big love.

And robot mode all along.

Reviews

Wonderful! When I’m asking an intruding thought who sent it, for what purpose and why, is my aim to find an answer or to just talk to the thought to collapse it? Thank you!

Brilliant, thanks Tom
Will catch some of your next workshops, for sure. Xox

very interesting

Thank you!

Thank you for this wonderfully affirming session. It's always a pleasure to hear your calming wisdom.

That was so helpful Tom. Thank you. Love the title and the info. And appreciate all the new times including ‘just in time.’ Love being in that flow.