The Light Shines In the Darkness

Think of consciousness as working  like a flashlight (or torch as the British would say) -- one that you rotate the lens cell to focus the beam. Rotate the lens in one direction and the beam becomes broad and dim like a floodlight. Rotate it in the other and the beam becomes narrow and bright like a spotlight.

We need the broad dim floodlight type of awareness to gain perspective, to see the big picture, to make sure we don't miss something important in the peripheral areas of our sphere of awareness. We need the narrow bright  spotlight to zoom in on something that appears important to us so that we can see it in detail and understand it better.

In our normal state of consciousness we move continuously between these two ways of focusing awareness  with most of our time being spent in between the two extremes. Some people have deficiencies of certain neurotransmitters (dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin) that make proper control and direction of attention difficult or impossible. People who suffer from such disorders may not be able to focus attention properly into that bright spotlight or they  may get stuck in the other extreme -- unable to see the big picture. In the latter case, they may get sucked so totally into one small task that they lose perspective and work very hard to achieve very little. They may set out to put their cluttered living quarters in order, for example, and work very hard all day moving this over here and that over there. But at the end of the day, though everything may be in a different place, the overall state of clutter remains unchanged.

I mention all this because one of the things I want to talk about  is the practice of meditation. And the practice of meditation is essentially the practice of paying attention. It's not so much about what we pay attention to as how we pay attention. How we pay attention does eventually affect, however, what attracts our attention, and therefore does change what we pay attention to. But this is not the direct result of meditation practice. Meditation is not about training yourself to pay attention to certain things and not to others. Meditation changes what you pay attention to because it changes what is important to you.  Your attention is directed by what is important to you. What is important to you is a matter of your values. If your values don't change, no matter how much you practice meditation, nothing of any consequence really changes.

Meditation isn't likely to solve the problems of those suffering from attention deficit disorders related to the neurotransmitter problems mentioned previously. While meditation practice may help people with such disorders, it will be of more benefit after they consult a  psychiatrist or psychopharmacologist and restore neurotransmitters to proper levels.  Meditation practice is intended primarily for those  in the state of functional unhappiness we call  normal.