Expanding Your Awareness of Visual Space

To provide a glimpse of how things in everyday life change as you change the way you pay attention, try the following exercise. As you continue to read this page, allow yourself to be aware of the three-dimensional physical space between your eyes and the words printed on the page. Let the awareness occur gradually as you continue reading. Because we are conditioned to sense only objects and exclude space, it may take some time for you to become aware of this visual sensation of physical space, once you do become aware of the space, pause for a few seconds as you gently maintain that awareness.

Now, without sifting your eyes from the page, gradually begin to sense the space that is to the right and to the left of the page. Let your peripheral field of vision widen spontaneously at its own page to take in that awareness. And once you develop that awareness, enjoy it for a few seconds.

Now allow your visual background to come forward, to become as important as your visual foreground. In other words, the whole page, the edges of the book, the table, the wall behind the book, can be made foreground simultaneously with the words you are reading. This too should be carried out effortlessly and naturally. It may seem difficult at first, but it is well within our capacity to focus in this way. Sit for a few seconds as you gently maintain this awareness, and allowing background and foreground to become equally important or interesting.

As you continue reading also include the appearance of space that surrounds your entire body. Allow time for this perception to take place as your visual awareness opens and broadens of the space between the lines you are reading, even as you continue to read. Also bring into your awareness the space between the letters of the words. Your awareness of visual space can continue to expand effortlessly while your awareness of letters, words and concepts continues.

As you continue to allow your awareness to open and become more inclusive, you may notice subtle alterations in your reading experience. Your understanding of what you are reading may become easier to read the words. Thoughts of things related to what you are reading may float effortlessly through your mind. Perhaps your hand supporting the book feels more relaxed. Breathing may come more easily. You may discover that muscles in your face or neck have started to loosen somewhat or that you your position in the chair has become more comfortable. You may feel more whole or unified. You may also feel rising up some mildly unpleasant feelings that have been repressed by the sustained act of narrow focusing.

If you notice even small changes during the reading exercise, you have begun to experience some of the benefits of open focus. It may seem strange, even uncomfortable at first, for we all have learned to pay narrow and effortful attention to what we can understand, analyze, and do something about what we read. That idea is so ingrained that many of us have become unaware of the mental and physical stress and fatigue that accompany this constant gripping. Our eyes grip the words; our minds grip the concepts, while our fingers may literally clutch the book. But we don’t need this level of effort merely for reading. By comparison, Open Focus releases effortful attention and allows us to spend just the right amount of effort, rather than chronically ever doing it. A precise, relaxed, yet interested attention – a lightly held narrow – objective attention amid a diffuse immersed background of space – is maintained, while tension and stress diffuse and dissolve.

This exercise can be used while doing almost anything, from riding the subway to talking on the telephone to cooking to working on the computer. Stopping what you are doing and becoming you aware of your peripheral vision of space and the space between you and the objects around you is a way to begin incorporating Open Focus into everyday life.