THE LIMITATIONS OF FOCUSING ON THE PRESENT MOMENT
Short version
The idea of focusing on the present moment is a curious one. To be in the present moment, it's not focusing or what we focus on which is important, it's how we use the senses.
Focusing is always a form of selective attention, so if you focus on something you always limit your general awareness of all the other things which are happening in this present moment.
The minute you can actually focus on the present moment, you will find you are sensing in a broadband way.
Long version
The problem is that most of the time, when our senses are focusing on something, we are thinking about something else. Life is about coordination and the challenge is to concentrate. And so on internet these days, there is a trend with seemingly hundreds of sites which advise focusing on the present moment. Mindfulness in the present moment is very different to focusing on it.
Focusing on the taste of food, on every footstep, or on a tree or flower, are good concentration exercises, and generally speaking they are far better than sudokus, reading or writing this, or any other purely intellectual, abstract form of concentration.
But, focusing is always a form of selective attention, so if you focus on something you always close off your general awareness to all the other things which are happening.
So focusing on the present moment, is at best an interesting first step. But the minute you can actually focus on the present moment, you will find you are sensing in a broadband way.
In order to be now, and have a feeling of integration and awakeness, it's not focusing or what we focus on which is important, it's how we use the senses, by being mindful in a broadband way we are automatically now.
Extra
It could be argued that this is only a confusion of terminology, but anyone who has experienced broadband sensing wouldn't confuse it with focusing on a squirrel, a cloud, or the smell of coffee. It is a state of being on the lookout for dangerous squirrels, behind clouds, drinking coffee.
Focusing and broadbanding are two different ways of sensing and experiencing life. They are two different ways of being.
Please continue with The Value of Focusing on an Abstract Personlised God