How to Distinguish Spotlight Consciousness from Floodlight Consciousness

Are you awake? Not, "not sleeping," but "awake" awake? Read on...

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Your self.

1. Allen Ginsberg BACKGROUND: As an undergraduate philosophy major, I loathed Alan Watts. But his "Eastern ideas" had no place in my mind, since my education was built upon the model of Western Philosophy. Then, eventually, as a professional philosopher, I realized that my contemporaries were overly-enamored with science, and they still insist on using this essential model to explain consciousness, without success. Then it dawned on me, thanks to Alan Watts and Allen Ginsberg. As the latter put it: "Notice what you are thinking."
2. Spotlight Consciousness SPOTLIGHT CONSCIOUSNESS: You're driving down a road, a long drive, going to work. Your mind is flooded with images, but you're thinking about your fight with a friend from the night before. You show up to work on time, and there you are. You are hardly aware of how you got there, how you parked, how you walked up the stairs. You're just . . . "there." You have used your time in the mode of Spotlight Consciousness: you paid attention to something very different from what was happening all around you, including the way in which your own body and mind were behaving as you transported yourself to your destination.
3. Floodlight Consciousness FLOODLIGHT CONSCIOUSNESS: You take the same drive, but decide resolutely not to focus on something "inside your mind," as the popular way of putting it goes. Instead, you're going to notice what's around you, and you do so. This is Floodlight Consciousness. (And, it turns out, it's still "you" who adopted this very different approach to your experience. Think, for example, of the difference between driving to work, and driving through a national park where you anticipate glimpses of wildlife.)
4. THE POINT: You have a choice. Your consciousness is, in a sense, "split." Are you paying attention to the spotlight, or to the floodlight? Even within spotlight consciousness, you have choices available to you. What do you choose? Will it be your finances or your romantic interests? If you instead focus on floodlight consciousness, once again you can only notice so many things as you move about. Will you look at the telephone poles or the cows? The intent here is simply to raise awareness of the fact that what you focus upon is always up to you. This can be extremely liberating. You can always control your mind, provided only that you notice that you can.

Tips & Warnings

• Try this is a variety of contexts. Do it soberly.
• Drive safely. Nothing I've said here should recommend to you the using of narcotics. In fact, I positively recommend that you do not do this while driving.
• My illustrations are intended only to give you an "idea" of what it's like to take control of your thoughts. Since I never understood this concept until my late 30's, I assume a lot of people may not have noticed this, regardless of whether they're younger or older than I am.