“It is of the utmost importance to have knowledge. But it is also of the utmost importance to be able to escape the known.” Jiddu Krishnamurti
With this quote begins the article by Antero Alli, “Double Vision: On the First and Second Attention.” In it, he presents two different ways of perceiving reality, which are also mentioned in the article on separation — the third stage of alchemical transformation. And since I am a great enjoyer of useful distinctions, below I will briefly present the main ideas from this article.
The Distinct Goals of the Two Types of Attention
According to Antero Alli, the primary goal of the first attention is “to solve such survival problems as finding where the food, water and shelter are to stay alive. Once these problems are solved, the first attention continues as an automatic process of labeling the objects and people in the immediate environment.”
Although the difference between the survival conditions of the primitive and the modern human is enormous, as far as the survival reflex and its accompanying fear are concerned, it seems things have not changed much. Although the way of dealing with this fear and the degree of awareness is different, it continues to be there — in the deepest depths of our psyche, from where it influences a huge part of the choices and reactions in our lives. Therefore, the first attention is still the dominant way of perception of the modern human, satisfying his need for security by labeling things and assigning meaning. In this sense, even the more abstract levels of thinking such as mathematics and philosophy are here.
In contrast, the primary goal of the second attention is the simple act of seeing, of observing without assigning meaning to what has been perceived.
“By opening and expanding the gap in our perception, we begin to perceive more reality — not our ideas about reality or what it should mean but the existing conditions for the way things actually are. The more reality is perceived, the more the second attention expands to directly experience certain immutable principles of existence, such as uncertainty and impermanence, principles that do not require the attribution of meaning.” Antero Alli
The second attention is a basic condition to unlock creativity in our lives, freeing our perception from evaluations, interpretations, and the attribution of meanings. As such, it is closely related to the experience of uncertainty and the transience of all living things — including our own mortality.
And so, while the first attention is based on the function of the intellect and physical sight, the second attention is associated with the energy body and intuition. The main difference between the two as cognitive functions is that while the first attention refers to the accumulation of knowledge that supports survival and adaptation, the second attention does exactly the opposite — it frees the consciousness from the accumulated knowledge and keeps the mind open to the new and unknown.
“The first attention stabilizes consciousness; the second attention destabilizes consciousness. The first attention is nourished by the pursuit of such postulates as fixed beliefs, ideas, prejudices, assumptions and dogmas. The more unstable second attention is enlivened when we allow ourselves more uncertainty and when we find the inner silence and the calm of not knowing ourselves. The second attention opens and/or narrows according to the individual’s threshold of anxiety, or how much uncertainty we can allow before anxiety sets in. Anxiety is an expression of the nervous system’s natural response when we reach the limit of how much uncertainty we can bear.” Antero Alli
The Birth of the New: Often Accompanied by Anxiety
One of the common complaints in the psychotherapist’s office is the experience of uncaused inner tension and restlessness. A person feels tense and anxious but does not know why — they simply feel they cannot stay in one place and this is accompanied by a feeling of indefinite fear. Here is one explanation — below the threshold of the conscious attitude there are unconscious contents that contradict what we are used to thinking about ourselves and others. Below the threshold of our conscious attitude, however, is also the creative process. This is the new understanding that is ripening and wants to be seen even at the cost of not being understood by others and rejected if we follow what it brings us.
Jung passed through a period of immense inner tension when a new understanding of the nature of the unconscious began to take shape within him (subsequently leading to his break with Freud). The development of this new paradigm for explaining the hidden dynamics of psychic processes sometimes generated such high levels of tension that he even thought he was going mad. Although with less intensity, the same thing happens to each of us when something new is on the verge of surfacing in our consciousness. These may be contents or ideas previously suppressed or rejected that are completely foreign to our consciousness until that moment. The tension in this case is generated by the conflict between the acceptable and the rejected, between the known and the unknown. In this sense, it is an expression of the creative interaction between two opposing parts of the same thing seeking a way to meet, uniting in an internally non-contradictory way.
Developing Inner Security
Accordingly, the key to dealing with the state of inner tension is to develop the ability to endure higher levels of uncertainty. This means the development of a healthy inner Ego-center with clear boundaries—a person who is firmly grounded and does not feel like a victim of the people and events in their life, taking responsibility for everything that happens to them. Someone who has managed to transform the ability to withstand pain into inner stability and strength. The more a person manages to be present calmly and neutrally in what is happening to them, allowing themselves to experience moments of not-knowing and uncertainty, the more opportunities open up in their life for new understanding and vitality to enter.
“The first attention can serve as an anchor for the second attention, as the second attention can act as a catalyst or shock for the first attention. The first attention anchors the second attention when we learn how to find words, images and ideas that best approximate the truth and authenticity of the signal coming from the second attention. The second attention shocks the first attention awake with the experience of more uncertainty and the possibility of experiencing the unknown firsthand. If the second attention fails to anchor in the first attention, the absorption of light may intensify and overstimulate the nervous system; the brain heats up and we are flooded with psychic energy and imagery. It is like an electrical current through a wire that is not grounded, leading to a discharge of energy, a scattering and failure to deliver.” Antero Alli
For some people, the above may mean nothing. For me, however, as a repeated witness in my professional practice to people with awakened Kundalini, it means a lot. If they are not grounded enough, this truly leads to psychic exhaustion and excessively high levels of anxiety. In such cases, the means of grounding the energy must include work with the first attention—acquiring knowledge that provides meaning and understanding of the processes they are going through, and which gives them the reassurance that they are not going mad, no matter how strange things may be happening to them.
Creative Expression and Catharsis
Painting, dance, music, and other forms of art therapy can also be very useful in this process. They allow a person to release the invading contents from the unconscious, even if they do not understand them at the moment of their appearance. This is exactly what Jung did when he went through the period where his consciousness was flooded with images and contents from the unconscious that he did not understand. He began to paint mandalas and build a mini-village with small stones (just as he did when he was a young boy). To give himself permission to engage in such “childish” activities, he had to overcome his pride and sense of humiliation. But for him, this turned out to be the easiest and most accessible way to allow the contents of the unconscious to surface without threatening the normal functioning of his conscious Ego. It was the contents of this period (images, visions, and dreams) that subsequently laid the foundation for his contribution to psychology in exploring the archetypal layers of the human psyche. The rest of his entire life was dedicated to this understanding.
“Today I can say that I have never lost touch with my initial experiences. All my works, all my creative activity, has come from those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912, almost fifty years ago. Everything that I accomplished in later life was already contained in them, although at first only in the form of emotions and images. My science was the only way I had of extricating myself from that chaos. Otherwise the material would have trapped me in its thickets, swamped me like a creeping swamp plant. I took great pains to understand every single image, every item of my psychic inventory, and to classify them scientifically—so far as this was possible—and, above all, to realize them in actual life.” C.G. Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”
What Jung shared is a vivid example of how these two types of perception interact in a human being. As a rule, it takes time—often quite a lot of time—for images and experiences from the unconscious to be integrated into life. It took Michael Tamura twelve years to understand one of his own extremely vivid experiences during meditation, and Eckhart Tolle spent several years realizing exactly what had happened to him on the night he achieved enlightenment.
Awakened Kundalini and the Need for a ‘Sturdy Vessel’
The awakening of Kundalini energy is a phenomenon of this same order and understandably arouses fear in people who are unfamiliar with it and how the human energy body (the chakra system) functions. One of my clients used to say in such moments that her brain was “like soup,” and what helped her most to deal with her uncertainty and anxiety was reading extensively. Reading, as an activity of the first attention, helps experiences from the second attention to anchor themselves in reality through understanding, assigning them sense and meaning. This is also a form of grounding—the primary way to deal with awakened Kundalini.
“When the first attention habitually avoids uncertainty and resists the unknown, our thought processes can harden, becoming increasingly brittle and overly literal. Eventually, this over-literality in thinking can lead to feelings of claustrophobia, paranoia and the death of imagination. Western civilization’s educational systems have given the first attention a priori status, awarding the highest degrees according to how much knowledge can be retained. The problem with this is that we begin equating ‘not knowing’ with failure. The ‘knowing mind’ belongs to the first attention just as much as the ‘unknowing mind’ belongs to the second attention. The first attention secures itself by accumulating knowledge and plans, just as much as the second attention thrives in the atmosphere of discovery and the uncertainty of an open mind.” Antero Alli
In such a distinction lies something very valuable for understanding how the two minds function—the knowing and the unknowing. Too much “knowing mind” hardens us and hinders the creative process and discovery. Too little “knowing mind” creates a problem in finding a sturdy vessel in which the vast energy of the spirit can enter without breaking it. Wisdom is necessary to find the healthy balance between these two attitudes of perception.
“The crazy regime of the King Monkey Mind can be dethroned by shifting focus to the second attention. The second attention can be cultivated by letting go of the search for meaning. This can be experienced by quieting the tendency to project, to interpret, and/or to assign meaning to what has been perceived, in exchange for paying attention to what is presenting itself before our eyes. This shift happens by refusing to label, name or explain what you are seeing or experiencing. Thus begins a process of flexing the perceiving muscle, which before becoming weak, broken and/or atrophied, was alive and active.” Antero Alli
Realizing that finding meaning is also part of the arsenal of the first attention and the knowledge-accumulating mind was an unexpected perspective for me. Searching for meaning has been, and continues to be, very important to me—it is the means through which I understand what is happening so that I can find solutions. However, taken to its extreme and unbalanced by its opposite, it truly begins to interfere. Therefore, it is good to accept that things have meaning, but equally, they have no meaning.
What I have found helps me stay away from extremes is imagining that I am putting together a complex puzzle made of thousands of pieces. The more complex the puzzle I am assembling, the more pieces there are to fit. In the beginning, the whole picture is not visible. I am only gathering “pieces of experience and sensation” that at first glance have no connection to each other. Only later do I begin to sense the connection between them, and with time, it begins to be seen more and more clearly.
Summary
In conclusion, here is Antero Alli’s summary of the role of the first and second attention in the process of our spiritual awakening:
“To summarize, the first attention attaches to the concerns of everyday life, solving mundane problems and making sense of things by automatically assigning labels and meanings to experience. The second attention relates to the present moment, energy and phenomena, allowing a direct engagement with the autonomous forces of creation and even the living archetypes governing existence. When these two kinds of attention recognize each other and find a way to work together, an important bridge is built between them, allowing us to move freely between worlds.” Antero Alli
This article, presenting the two types of attention, is part of the activities of developing the first attention. It provides words to describe a certain type of experience that has existed up to this point but has not been understood in a way that brings new perspectives and solutions. Its function is also to create conditions for grounding—strengthening the mind so that when experiences and contents from the world of the unconscious arrive, that same mind’s tolerance for uncertainty and the frustration of the need for understanding is higher. It also “gives permission” not to know. To see in not-knowing not a cause for fear, but a stimulus for creative activity. Not ignorance, but a release from old knowledge so that something new and fresh can enter our lives.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
