"Mind Your Surroundings"

The title is the only viable piece of good work the pathetic excuse for a film "Batman Begins" stamped into my nerve endings. However with it I as my base, I can now attempt to explain a focus, yet not a focus; it is technically such, but focuses on, not the word, nor the images, or anything at all connected with "focus", but is simply another manifestation of the idea, which has no word in itself.
This manifestation, as it occurs, and is now sharply obvious to me, has been around since I can recall. It is funny how I can recall something, which at the time I did not even notice, but yet it does remain in my memory that I have experienced this manifestation countless times before.
The particular appearance of focus is based on the surroundings in my mind's eye. Those same surroundings which I have thus far subconsciously created, and had tremendous difficulty in focusing upon. If I am in tune, or aware of my conjuration of them, then I am calm. Otherwise, a frenzy of unsuccessful attempts riddled with the why's and how's of what is happening to my emotional state, only induce a further trance of that which they seek to understand, leaving me to an eventual breakdown and depression.

Now, the best description I can provide at this moment would be one which Buddhists use: an extention of the self, the body. If I believe I am sitting on my orange and white couch typing this blog right now, I subconsciously create a portrait of exactly such a situation. The TV in front of me, the bike to my left, the windows, doors, temperature, even to the slightest, however "foggy" and remembered these senses might seem, as if out of in a state of dream, they are there, and it is they that create the extention of myself to which my focus is soley devoted.

If I wish to devote myself to not feeling a certain way, I must change. The change, I hay logically thus far assumed was in my emotions themselves. It is only a miniscule part. The change is in my environment, one which guides my emotions so strongly, that the emotions themselves, as weak and uncultivated as they are, cannot resist its direction. Thus to try to accumulate sudden mastery of them, through asking of their change (and pessimistically rebuking myself if I do not succeed, by creating yet another set of environments in my head) is ludicrous.

So I change, through first acknowledging the created environments, the environment. This is not as easy as it sounds. The amount of awareness, impartiality, and change in state from an autonomously emotionally attached one, to a blissful and undisturbed state of 3rd person observer, is excessively difficult. After all, this is the goal on which the practice of mindfulness meditation is centered upon.

Then with this change I learn to embrace the reality of now, and the changes of the world as they come, without unsuspectingly subjecting myself, rather habitually and possibly almost, or on the brink of, subconsciously to environments, which force me into the past, future, and onto other tasks which are irrelevant to the now.

Approaches to Focus

In light brought on in my readings of a Buddhist sites' definition of "Mindfullness", and further contemplation of my own, very similar, thoughts on methods of bringing focus to my activities, I've realized the supreme advantage of the Buddhist method over my own (my own method was developed over time with much experience, and self acknowledged insight mutually exclusive to any Buddhist influence until today).

In my view of the world, I hold several things key to retaining a focus. All of these key ingredients are different vantage points streamlined to motivate my love and appreciation of myself and my art(or whatever I may be doing at the time). For example (and these are more detailed in my journal blog) I remind myself when I listen to a lecture, read a textbook, or discuss a mistake I've made, that I am not a expert in this field, and I do not wish to be an expert. This simply calms my perfectionistic ideals into submission.

Now, my view on distractions from my focus is a simple one: silence my mind from them. This is much harder than it sounds, and is most times a failure when attempted. Most times when I try to silence, I am left with a nagging feeling, as if I am one step away from accomplishing that solitude (and at the same time I apply motivational techniques to stimulate my enthusiasm) and focus, but am consistently running head first into an invisible, impenetrable, immobile barrier. Note that moving past this barrier is very much influenced by my surroundings. At home, on a leisurely schedule, and encompassed by serenity, I find focusing on things I WILL do later on with a compassion a feasible and almost effortless task, however occasionally my motivation stirs into a depressive pensive mood. This tendency has been noticeably decreasing, as my success rate of focus outside the home, especially in areas where reminiscent, almost nostalgic, and explicitly chronic, thoughts have been an auspice of failure. In those areas, however the usual circumstances of myself, and the normalcy of the environment leave no options to my emotion but to falter, and face, the then, inevitable defeat.

As a superficially similar but practically opposite technique is the one presented by Buddhists. They see that dependence on oneself to produce an illusion, as in my case I produce an illusion of motivation and an illusion of defeat, which in my 1st viewpoint seems inevitable, with conscious effort does not allow for a connection with reality. The centerpiece of their vision is in acceptance of the world around; with acceptance comes compassion. Clear to me now, acceptance frees the need for any further manipulation of ones own thought process, in fact acceptance allows for a self modifying cognition which is always streamlined toward success and understanding of the goodness of life. This vantage will be much less likely to force a autonomous questioning of morals, or produce event driven trigger anxieties, which loose a focus.

Knowledge is Unchanging

After watching an inspirational independent lens episode on PBS regarding the Philidelphia Orchestra's ideology and thoughts about themselves and their music I recall an old though.

Mundane. This is how most people would describe their schooling, or their day to day life. I agree. Mundane, though in hindsight or in anticipation of an old or new activity is not a common phrase. Intresting this is, and as I pondered over the idea, I came to a hypothesis (through my own experiences) that people are never as fully appreciative of an act as when they are inspired by it in the beginning, or reminisce about it in the finish as they are throughout the act itself.

However, once in hindsight the knowledge is the same. This is the unique thing about knowledge, it is uncahnging. Much as a person may cahnge, from hating to loving someone, or brusselsprouts, etc. the composition, history, etc. of the ideas and objects will not change. This allows for updated understandings of previous material with a different memento, a different insight, attitude, viewpoint, whatever one may call it. This is partially the reason to the saying: "It's harder than it looks" or in other world can be at the root cause of arrogance, conceited self images, and boasting. Furhtermore, I can see this as a contribution to the "high" experienced upon the success of an act. The simple realization that what was done was not in vain, and has now acknowledgeably changed a person's though process, morals, and/or outlook on life, and understanding of oneself, is in itself majestical and prone to high releases of dopamine :) :)!!

Whatever this may be, a new routine, a new career, a new job, I am certain the effects will be the same
(this I can only say for myself b/c obviously a statement of expectation such as the above only sets an influence on my future viewpoints & thus may be viewed as the cause for these here predicted, but later future rationale).

Now as far as to my opinion as to whether this hypothesis if assumed factual can be exploited. I believe so, and its exploitation I also guess may be, and has occasionally (although the recollection of feelings of such motivations, their times, places, and constituencies are a very difficult task fraught w/ its own learning curve & failures)
benefitted me. By holding on to those inaugural impulsive emotions which drove the aspiration within a being, one can harness and use their ideas as a kind of energy guide to channel current emotions into practical, predictable, stable, and (w/ experience) robust ones. Additionally, this focus is just the type I was attempting to explain some articles back & I apoligize for the lack of personal experimental examples, none of which I can recall at the moment. This is what I believe people mean when they say a person just has to "reach" down deep inside to muster a respectable, but yet overall diminuative, amount of motivation.

What is a genius?

Genius, revered, by myself, and notably the whole of human society. Most notably secretly longed for by the stereotype on, usually, the basis of greed, and hope for self improvement.

It is not seldom that I find myself, wishng, or even pretending to think like Sir Issac Newton, or Vonhelm Leibniz, or Euler. I fantasise about creating new and useful methods, ones which I may respect and use equally as I do my text (when I"m focused, and when not these thoughts never enter my scope of comprehension, for it is fogged by depressive pensions)

(Passage of time and serious change is brain waves ~4 hrs later. . .)

I knew this would happen once I had no time left to finish blogging after 4th! Grr... so much for the intellectual side of myself, I did have 3 wonderfully complete entries though? Won't you agree?

And now to attempt to summarize what I'd left behind, in a much different tone of voice. The next idea I was hoping to address was one that is very minutae, severely simple and however not readily observable. As difficult as it is for me to focus right now I have no idea if I will be able to communicate 20% of the meaning I had in my head 4 hrs ago but here goes . . .

When planning an event, or a series of events, many have a overall idea of how the pieces of that plan "fit" among one another to cohesively work in sequence for the accomplishment of a given task. Futhermore, with large problems, it becomes, out of necessity, imperative that a person should simplify the overall process and its innerworkings to smaller bits, which are projects of their own.

The dillema, thus arises, just as the splitting occurs. An attention shift occurs, and focus is translated from the big picture to the small. Now, I personally, tend to lose focus of my overall goals, in leiu of accomplishing the smaller ones, and have a drastically difficult time in switching my focus to a positive and constructive one, especially when there is a negative problematic focal point in the gritty, detailed work of the underclassed subproject. Disregarding even my own greed, and ambition, with a much stronger emotion I do not yet understand, I drive myself, most times to depression in order to disobey my own command and continue stubbornly searching for a solution to that problematic focus.

Another aspect, involving the same planning, and splitting, which I will emphasise is the imaginative convocation of resources, and production of a final product versus the pragmatic one. Workings of this sort, are so common in my head, that I've only recently realized how streched the frontier really is. I may head home, thinking that I have work to do, consisting of several class assignments. These assignments in my mind are already analysed, and their exitory "juice" or temptation toward my intellect and creativity, is drained before I have a chance to physically complete any of them. This drain may have occurred during the lecture in school, or outside of class as a followup to somebody's comment on the subject (small things like comments tend to stick in my mind). Regardless the reason and notwithstanding the source, the juice is drained. What does this mean for my hypothesised work in progress? Simply, it is not accomplished.

Why? A fair question, deserving a just explanation. I hypothesise that without the stern focus described in my earlier entries one cannot shake the "buzz" of commotion around oneself in order to concentrate with correct motivational drive toward the final goal.

There is a significant difference in what becomes accomplished versus what I deemed accomplished before setting to actually concieve a physical solution to a problem. The rub is that most times, with my short attention span, and fear of committment to tasks, the justification and rummaging through my own consciense is enough to settle the burning desire in my mind.

This brings me to aswering the topic of this thread, what is a genius? In my mind a genius encompasses a person who can without hesitation, and almost in second nature, find a single focus in the world, ignore the outside influence, and look at the facts in detail. Thus his/her accomplishments toward solving the problem will not be affected in any way by the outside world and only by his/her own abilities and the problems' nature.

This discussion has turned from a more realistic post, to a much more philosophical one from which I cannot even extract meaningful information for now.

Mind's Focus

I argue, that beside motivation, the next step toward success is focus.

Yes, is is easy to say one should focus, or even more simple to hear frends and family instruct toward the goal, however true enlightenment on matters such as these only comes through experence as noted previously.

Focus is a tricky surrepticious feeling to master, and one which even when mastered is elusive and haunting if misused properly. This is factualy due to the possible misuse of focus, to exfoliate areas, and concentrate one's energy into areas, which are counterproductive, and not coutervailing toward remedying a problematic state of being.

Even as I write this excerpt of my thoughts, they shift in and around my focal points. At times I find myself wondering: "How am I writing so elegantly, will I be able to continue", other times I struggle to remind myself of the reason for begining this thread (that of course not yet stated, but being . . . memory lapse . . .). And when I do remind myself that I only write, and do, what I coose because I do so choose, I recall the serenity of peace and singlemindedness. This is not to say an arrogant nor concieted singlemindedness socially, but one which allows the systematic ignorance of information not pertinant to a goal one has ingrained in a self. Yes, I've wound my way back from the epth of my mind's reclusion and have finally waddled into the correct reason for beginning this blog: My intent and habitual focus, on the unproductive, and most notably, with emphais, problematic aspects of a situation.

These problems, are the same causalities of continual frustration and lack of innovation within a subject, or for that matter, and one mch superious the the latter, lack and degeneration of motivation toward a subject. Thus in the bliss, creaed by sigleminded motivation one can "tune out" these erratic frequencies, liable to such adversities as mentioned above, and focus on the continuation and progression of his/her motivation, to even better isolate from the distractive forces.

This is not to say that attainment of such enlightenment can or will, as it surely will not, occur without proper experience

(measured inmy terms as mistakes learned from, and contemplated over

[ here I can tell my thoughts are not yet ripe, b/c my style of writing is deviating more and more from the notions inside my head, and these notions, which come every so often, yet not as enough as I would like them (topic reserved for next post), are not yet ripe])

Differential Moods

This title is very ambiguous. Am I referring to my mood swings? No I'm not. What I mean to say when I say differential, and without concocting a scientificaly viable title for publising in a respected scholarly journal, is that my writing styles change much depending on the mood I'm in.

Per say, my writing can be more formal if I am inquisitive, or perpetually ponderous at times, however other times, I stress and only wish to rid my mind of what I will myself to remember.

[A comment of the filing of this information on paper or logging it in general is that as soon as I drop a subjects' continuous and relentless, as it most times is, nagging reminder of its values and morals, which it should teach me

(which are usually in example form, with real expereince situations, b/c I do believe that these are the only tool to remedy stubborness in a human)

just as soon I forget about those ideals which I'd set for myself, and practically used in some cases, even weeks on end. These bouts usually end in depression streaks, however unpleasant and anticlimactic as they may be to my uptempo styles berfore, which mind you, I've never passed up as opportunities to vow thatI'd never sink to depressive lows ever again! :)]

At times I am more experiencial with my views, other times more philosophical and abstract.

Choice: Motivation OR Oportunity

What would I rather have, motivation do accomplish a goal, or the opportunity, capital, and networking?

Without hesitation, I choose, motivation. For without motivation opportunity is nil, but without opportunity, one can only be more motivated to attain such.

Perhaps, this is why I consider myself a "spoiled" individual, in a sense that I am given the opportunity to achieve, however, I refer to my animalistic instinct to take advantage of my givens: food, shelter, entertainment; thus I am lazy. However this does not stall the urge tofeel accepted and accomplished in what I stive for, thus I am drawn to the initiative of copious new activities, and then leave them as I found them for lack of motivation and consequently the lack of sight in a goal, which this motivation stirs.

More on the subject of the reality of accomplishments: my mind races ahead of the times, and this helps contribute to demotivating the expected results, or goals of what I've set out to do. Perchance, one may call this ADD, and this is a arguable case, I might be ADHD, however I also think this same stereotypical diagnosis made by an individual of some intellect, may be the reason why so many people's diagnoses are misread, thus shielding knowledge away from another discomforft, here more emotional, than a proven chemical imbalance

(I won't splurge on the chemical "proof" that is behind ADD, because, just as easily these two abnormalities in the human psyche may have very similar symptoms).