Do you have Attention Power? From a talk given by E.J. Gold
PART 5
The next step is the Glass Box Exercise, in which we remain seated before a box with a glass front and a plastic back.
We sit for one full hour just trying to see it as a simple glass box-to reject our childhood conditioning that it’s a TV set which provides amusement, entertainment and important information.
We try to sit for one hour without allowing ourselves to be drawn into the drama, the conflict, the distractions with which we are so cleverly bombarded. ‘Just a box,’ we repeat to ourselves, ‘it’s just a plain old box, that’s all; there’s nothing significant happening-just some changes in light and some sounds, but I mustn’t forget that it’s just a box.’
Of course, to be effective at all, this focus on the TV set as a simple plastic box with a glass front should be unbroken throughout the whole hour.
The word "cogitate" is, in a sense, like snapping fingers to remind us to be here. The distracting factor comes from the mind’s ability and desire to twist and distort the simple word cogitate. The distractions come from the mind. In the glass box exercise-or The Ultimate Video Game-where is the distracting factor? Is it in the television set, in the video, or where?. The process is the same: the mind wants to associate with what’s happening on the set.
The mind produces the same distracting factor, and actually we’ll see the same results. We’ll become caught up in it; we’ll be caught up in the significance of it, that’s evidence of one master; we’ll be caught up in the emotions of it, that’s another master; or we’ll be frustrated at ourselves for not being able to prevent ourselves from being caught up in it, that’s the same master.
We’ll get up and walk away from it, look away from it; we’ll divert our attention in some other way, or grit our teeth and force ourselves-that’s another master. And then another master still is, we’ll sit there, eyes open, go completely, dumbfoundedly asleep and wake up the way we do on the freeway when we’re driving-when we suddenly wake up and realize we’ve driven twenty miles without realizing it.
So it all boils down to one thing: the mental centrum operates always by association; this reminds me of that which reminds me of that which reminds me of that and so forth. When the mental centrum is bored, it gets active and begins rattling.
All an intrusion means is that we never have trained our attention.