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IV. Attention

Because attention is both finite and generative, its deliberate use — attentionality — is central to this philosophy. Attention is treated as the primary currency of being. It cannot be stored or manufactured, only spent. Each moment offers a choice: where to place attention, and by doing so, what to allow into the fabric of reality.

Attentionality

Attentionality means choosing not just what to notice, but what to observe and what to witness. It requires discernment: what is worthy of integration? What should pass through the self’s gate and shape the ongoing narrative?

To live with attentionality is to participate consciously in the construction of the self and the world.

This leads us to a structured model of attention that guides our interaction with the world.

The Structure of Attention

Liminalism distinguishes between three levels of attention: noticing, focusing,and witnessing.

Noticing is the initial, often involuntary registration that something is present. It marks the moment when a signal crosses the threshold into awareness. Without noticing, nothing else is possible; it is the precondition for all further engagement.

Focusing involves shaping attention around what has been noticed. It is the deliberate act of narrowing the aperture, sustaining engagement, and excluding distraction. Focusing is what enables observation to occur — the mental stance in which we begin to examine, interpret, and interact with what we’ve noticed. It is not passive; it is the act of holding something in the beam of consciousness long enough for meaning to begin forming.

Witnessing is the final phase: the integration of what has been focused on into the narrative of the self. To witness is to not merely see or analyze, but to claim — to write the experience into the evolving story of who we are. It is through witnessing that growth, transformation, and identity take place.

This three-phase model emphasizes that attention is not a single act but a layered process. Many people overemphasize observation while overlooking the role of noticing or failing to witness what they have seen. Liminalism holds that to attend fully, one must engage all three levels — letting the world in, shaping how it is held, and making it part of the self.

Interlude: Attention

Attention is the only true currency we have, so use it wisely. Spend it on things that matter, where it makes a difference, not on useless worry or regret or things outside your control. Give it to people you love, or could love, or to people who need you. Buy some of life’s necessities with it, do your duty, keep your promises, show up. Hoard a little for yourself, listen to your inner voice, be introspective, look closely and take the time to accept what you see. Pay your dues with it to whatever philosophy you follow, in quiet reflection. Invest some of it to ensure you are allocating the rest wisely. For you cannot save it - the discount rate on attention is infinite – you cannot make more and it will run out all too soon. You are always and ever either spending it wisely or wasting what little you have. So pay attention.

Interlude: Good Grief

This interlude is fairly personal as it’s about grief. And the only grief I can really speak to is my own, and the grief I’ve seen in those around me. But I think there’s something generalizable in what I’ve experienced and worth sharing even with those who don’t know me well.

The last few years I’ve had to deal with more grief than the rest of my life combined. Perhaps this just shows that I’m lucky, that I didn’t have much of it up till now. But it also means that I had a lot to learn about how to process it (and help my kids process theirs).

During that time, I noticed three things that we tended to do that, I think, makes the sadness harder to handle and, ultimately, to move past. The first was a hard one for me to learn, the second would have tripped me up if I hadn’t actively worked to avoid it, and the third took its toll on my oldest child.

Noticing We Are Grieving

It wasn’t until well over a year into my divorce that I finally realized how sad I was about it and accepted that I needed to grieve over it before I could move on. Before that, I was reeling from the changes in my life, I was angry at the person who was now my adversary, I was free from how I had felt for years, I was relishing the extra time with my kids, I was worried about the future. I was many things, but I didn’t really realize the deep sadness that ran through all of it. Sure, I could tell I was sad some of the time, that I felt depressed and overwhelmed by it sometimes, but I couldn’t locate the real source of the sorrow. Much less admit it to myself, or to others.

You see, I thought that because I knew it was the right decision for us both, that things hadn’t been working for far too long, and that things had quickly turned unpleasant, because of all that, I thought that there was nothing really to grieve about. I also told myself some myths about myself that made it harder for me to see and accept what was going on. But eventually I had to face up to the fact – admit to myself – that, regardless of what I thought about it, I still felt a huge loss. A loss of what could have been, of the life I thought I would have, of the person I had married. A lot of that had been gone for a while, but it had been lost slowly, sometimes so slowly that I didn’t notice it while it was happening.

I eventually realized that I was holding on to a lot of things because I hadn’t dealt with the sorrow. I had lost something and was grieving it, but until I noticed that fact I wasn’t able to process the way I felt and come to terms with the new reality.

Pushing Away Sadness

Throughout this time, when I felt down, I learned how tempting it can be to push it away. Even before I noticed that I was grieving, when I would feel sad, or depressed, or overwhelmed, I would initially try to shake it off. It is tempting to not want to feel the hurt and to push it away, to distract yourself, throw yourself into work or projects, to act happy even though you’re not.

But what I realized was, when I could identify that I was sad about something, I was much better off letting myself feel it than stuffing it down or pretending it didn’t exist. So during some of the toughest moments, I decided that I would actually schedule time to be sad. I would set aside an hour, or even a couple, and lie in bed and let the pain wash over me. I wouldn’t run away from it. I would get to know the sadness and make sure I actually let myself feel it. I would cry, I would feel sorry for myself, I would wallow – whatever I needed – and let whatever came up come up. I didn’t enjoy these times, but I tried to appreciate them in a way, to see that all the ways I suffered made me human.

And I found that this would eventually just let it flow out of me. It stopped hanging around trying to get my attention, trying to make sure I knew it was there. It seemed that by acknowledging it, by really feeling it, this part of me knew that I had gotten its message: “something is wrong, something’s been lost, and you are hurting”.

Thankfully, I haven’t needed one of these in a while, but I know there will likely be a next time and I will need it then.

The Right Way to Grieve

Finally, I saw my son fall into a different trap when all my kids had to deal first with the sudden loss of a family pet, and then the sudden loss of a grandparent. He got caught up on expectations: how he thought he was supposed to feel and when, how he thought others were supposed to act, what he thought others expected from him.

He compounded his grief with all manner of other emotions bubbling up from these expectations.

He felt guilty for not feeling the loss right away, seeing his siblings’ expressions of grief and worrying that he was broken because he didn’t feel it. He felt angry at his siblings, when it finally did hit him, that they were already over it, expecting them to still be affected like he was. He worried that people expected him to perform grief in certain way, to cry with them or talk about it, when he just wanted to be alone.

He thought there was a right way to grieve, a formula for how to feel and act, that proved that you were really sad. When his own trajectory didn’t match his own expectations, or those he thought his family held, he got tangled in a new web of emotions and struggled to deal with the real hurt.

So my take away, I think, is that to truly process grief, we need to notice we are grieving and we need to avoid pushing it away, but we also need to realize that there is no right way to do that, that each person, each tragedy, each sorrow, is unique and the course the grief will run will vary in ways that will speak nothing about the amount of hurt or the depth of loss. And if we remember that, maybe we can get the message sooner, hear it more clearly, appreciate it and be able to heal and move on sooner.

Practices

Attending to the Multitudes

The Self, understood as a threshold, is not a static, unified entity but mediates an internal multiplicity – the dynamic interplay of autonomous subagents, perspectives, impulses, and memories we can think of as the "directors" on our inner board. These components operate largely outside conscious control, running in parallel, generating ideas, performing intricate cognitive tasks, and bringing forth viewpoints often unbidden.

Attending to these multitudes is not about exerting absolute control over their generation (an often impossible task), but about applying Attentionality to their output as it surfaces at the threshold of conscious awareness. It is a practice of mindful engagement with the complex inner landscape.

The first step is Noticing the voices. These internal components surface ideas, feelings, or impulses rapid-fire. This initial surfacing is the moment they cross the threshold into potential awareness – the act of Noticing. They arrive unbidden, often fully formed, sometimes distracting, sometimes deeply insightful, grabbing attention based on salience, novelty, or emotional charge. We don't will them into being; we simply register that something has arrived from the depths of the system.

Once something is Noticed, the practice shifts to Focusing. This is the Chairman's crucial role: to decide where the collective attention will reside, even if only briefly. When an internal voice, impulse, or idea is Noticed, we can make the deliberate choice to give it airtime – to turn the beam of consciousness upon it, to inquire into its perspective, to truly hear what it is saying or feeling. This is the act of bringing a sidebar into the main discussion, allowing a specific "director" or "faction" the floor to articulate their viewpoint. This Focusing allows for observation – a clearer understanding of the nature and content of the internal element.

The final, vital step is Witnessing. It is the act of integrating what has been Noticed and Focused upon into the ongoing narrative of the self. This is the Secretary writing the minutes of the inner board meeting. It's saying, "Ah, I notice that perspective is present," and consciously including it in your understanding of the situation or yourself. We can explicitly bring these elements into our conscious narrative: "There's a very vocal faction that is quite angry and thinks we should have nothing to do with him again." or "The wise guy in the corner is telling me to mouth off again." or "The usual suspects are scared and want to run away."

This Witnessing, this act of narrating the presence of the internal multitude, does not mean becoming identified solely with that voice or perspective. It means acknowledging that this voice participated in the inner conversation. It becomes part of the recorded history of the meeting, but it is not necessarily the final resolution or the entirety of the "corporate stance."

This practice of attending to, and explicitly narrating, the internal multitudes offers profound benefits:

  • Navigating Ambivalence: By giving airtime to competing voices (Focusing) and acknowledging them in the narrative (Witnessing), we reveal that complex feelings like ambivalence are not flaws to be eradicated, but the natural state of a being composed of many perspectives. This allows us to reject false dichotomies ("I either love or hate this") in favor of a richer understanding ("Part of me feels X, another part feels Y, and a third part is worried about Z").
  • Reducing Self-Criticism: Distance is created between the core self (the narrative/minutes) and the specific thoughts, feelings, or impulses generated by the multitudes (the directors' comments). Acknowledge that "a scared part feels X" is very different, and less self-condemning, than identifying "I am scared." This creates space to respond with compassion and discernment, rather than shame. The narrative doesn't own every comment, it just records that the comment was made in the meeting.

  • Revealing Agency: By consciously choosing what to Focus on from the things Noticed, and by actively shaping how these elements are Witnessed and integrated into the narrative, we reveal the immense power of the Secretary (the conscious self). Agency lies not in silencing the directors, but in authoring the minutes – in choosing which insights are highlighted, how decisions are framed, and what story is told about the complex internal process and its engagement with the world.

  • The practice of attending to our internal multitudes through Noticing, Focusing, and Witnessing is a fundamental aspect of living with Attentionality at the Self's threshold. It allows us to engage honestly with the depth and complexity of our inner landscape, transforming potential internal chaos into a source of insight, flexibility, and conscious self-authorship.