Topical Guide 528
Mark Dorset
Attention, Focusing
Thinking: Focusing the Attention
“Inspiration”
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 6:
It is Matthew’s habit at the beach to take long walks and think. The sound of the waves rolling in, the rhythm of that sound, makes him feel less confused. Perhaps it merely muffles or regularizes the sound of confusion, but the effect is the same: he can let his thoughts roam, sometimes quite productively, […]
The idea for the sand molds didn’t come to Matthew that day, but days later, one night after he had gone to bed, when he had brought the memory of the woman to mind and was masturbating. He remembered the way she was playing, and though he meant to concentrate on her mouth, her breasts, her spread legs, the hollows where the muscles in her thighs were stretched, the pubic curls, his perverse intelligence turned the spotlight of memory on the juice container and the bricks of sand. He went limp in his hand while his mind raced along, diverted against its will from sensuality to ratiocination. Thus, perhaps, are more ideas born than the circumspection of inventors permits us to know.
Robert Benchley, “My Subconscious”:
One of the many reasons for my suspecting that I am headed for the last break-up is my Subconscious is getting to be a better man than I am. In fact, I am thinking of resigning and letting my Subconscious take over the business.
I go through the day in my bungling way, making mistakes, forgetting names, going north when I mean to go south and, in general, messing things up pretty thoroughly. I can get affidavits to this effect from five hundred disinterested observers. My average of direct hits is getting smaller and smaller each day and I am afraid that, before long, I shall have to hire somebody to go about with me just to keep me from hurting myself on sharp corners.
But once I get to sleep and my little old Subconscious gets started working, things begin to pick up. It does everything but sing to me. Dates and names that I have been unable to remember during the day are flashed before my closed eye-lids; ideas which have kept coyly hidden behind a barricade when I wanted them suddenly trip out and say: “Here I am, Daddy!” Solutions to problems which had me beating my head and heels on the carpet when I was awake offer themselves with startling simplicity, and if I could only train my Subconscious to make notes during the night, I could get through the next day with flying colors.
As I review the events of my past life I realize how subtle are the influences that shape our destinies. An incident of my youth may serve to illustrate. One winter’s day I managed to climb a steep mountain, in company with other boys. The snow was quite deep and a warm southerly wind made it just suitable for our purpose. We amused ourselves by throwing balls which would roll down a certain distance, gathering more or less snow, and we tried to outdo one another in this exciting sport. Suddenly a ball was seen to go beyond the limit, swelling to enormous proportions until it became as big as a house and plunged thundering into the valley below with a force that made the ground tremble. I looked on spell-bound, incapable of understanding what had happened. For weeks afterward the picture of the avalanche was before my eyes and I wondered how anything so small could grow to such an immense size. Ever since that time the magnification of feeble actions fascinated me, and when, years later, I took up the experimental study of mechanical and electrical resonance, I was keenly interested from the very start.
Seealso:
Attention, Focusing: TG 91
Thinking: Focusing the Attention TG 132
“Inspiration” TG 125, TG 447; and Transformation TG 78
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