“Attention is very different from what is usually called concentration. Concentration is often associated with a state of over-tension manifested by a furrowed brow and interference with breathing, almost as though one were trying to hold everything in place so as to be able to focus totally on a certain aspect of one’s surroundings. Attention in the Alexandrian sense involves a balanced awareness of oneself and one’s surroundings with an easy emphasis on whatever is particularly relevant at the moment.”

I am currently reading Body Learning: An Introduction to the Alexander Technique. In this book, Michael Gelb talks about the difference between concentration and attention:

In my mediation, I was concentrating on relaxing, instead of being attentive to what I was doing in the present moment. My intense concentration is what caused the tension I was feeling, and my fear of being alone and my curiosity regarding how much time was left are two (of many) factors which caused my mind to wander so heavily. In life, as in acting, you must learn how to just be. I think many of us (myself included) would be shocked to discover how effortless living can potentially be.

In this same book I read a phrase that I quite liked. The phrase was the Eternal Present Moment. The phrase refers to the state of non-doing – of just being and observing what is happening to you as it is happening to you. A person who existed only in this state would exist without worry, self-sabotaging thoughts, or anxiety. We stress about the unknown, and we self-sabotage ourselves based on fictions we’ve come to believe about ourselves because of events (which we’ve willingly allowed to define us) from our pasts. Someone who lived only in the present moment would be free from the limitations that are placed on each of us because of our preoccupations with the past and future. This is the state I aspire to exist and create in.
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