View source for Writing:Putting yourself to sleep by not trying to find rare loot

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(ADVANCED TOPIC assuming that you are familiar the basic idea of these 3 terms: [[Normalized]]s, [[Differential]]s, and [[Blur Horizon]]:)

If you are wondering how active Active Focus is and wondering what finding it entails, then this read is for you.

==Long Version==
  First step? ''Stop trying to look for what Active Focus looks like in others;'' '''The answer is within you.''' Trying to explain to you what Active Focus is like is like trying to explain the taste of a strawberry. No words in the world can explain the taste of a strawberry, you just have to eat it for yourself. We do not see what you see, and you cannot accurately explain to us what you see. Only YOU can see what blur looks like to you for various objects at various distances, lightings, speeds, and angles. A common mistake for newbies is that they often mistake things that are slightly blurry, for clarity. They are even more likely to make this mistake when the visual object of interest is words, because your brain will fill in the blanks and go, "oh? It's very legible so therefore it must be clearly seen." Perhaps for you what you see truly is clear, or perhaps it is slightly blurry and you've gotten so used to not noticing your vision that you think it's clear, or perhaps it is slightly blurry but because your brain is good at filling in the blanks it looks clear to you. Whatever the actual case may be, only YOU can figure this out. Nobody else. Only you. Your own internal visual experiences is what you have to pay attention to. You don't even have to read the rest of this because I'm not you. So get going and start looking at your vision. Just hop on aboard and drink your own visual kool-aid. 

  Second step? ''Active Focus is like sleep:'' '''you don't put yourself to sleep, sleep puts you out.''' by putting yourself to sleep. Think about this. Do you know how to sleep? Do you just press a few buttons like a computer and put yourself to sleep? Probably not. So, you may be asking how do you put yourself to sleep? You don't. You just do stuff or be places that increases your likelihood of sleep happening to you. Whether that be turning off electronics and lights an hour early, or actually lying in your bed instead of the couch for once in your life. In the same vein, you do not try to turn on Active Focus, you set yourself for success so that Active Focus, a natural-automatic mechanism, activates for you. If you want to Active Focus: live a life that lets you automatically do just that. Do stuff or be places that increase your likelihood of Active Focus happening to you. Do zoom in and pay attention to the details of how things look, how porous someone's beautiful skin is, how unflat-flat things are, how bird-wings flap as they fly. Do look at how things look at varying distances. Do zoom out and see how your object of interest looks within the grand landscape-horizon that envelopes around the object. Do look out at everything around you at the same time. Do look at how clear or blurry things appear to you as you move (or don't move), and as your object of interest moves (or doesn't move), as you pass things in your life and as life (things) passes you by. Do play tag with all your friends to test your ability to pay attention to an object while simultaneously tracking multiple objects, as you run away from the person who's IT that's chasing you but while tracking the IT-person you're still low-key trying to keep track of your crush in view. As you look in life, notice yourself. Be aware of where you are in your environment. Notice how you see and feel. Sometimes your eyes will feel tight, sometimes unburdened. Sometimes your vision gets worse, sometimes it's better, and sometimes there's no change at all. Set yourself up to actually see what's in your life. What could go wrong? Being deliberate in choosing an environment that allows you to explore the world visually is a win-win situation. At best, you find active focus. At worst, you find yourself appreciating life more and seeing life differently.

  Third Step? ''Finding Active Focus is like trying to find rare loot:'' '''you find rare loot by not trying to find rare loot.''' Now, that doesn't mean sit around idly. I repeat, do not just sit idly around. I repeat, do not just idly sit around. You're never going to find treasure just sitting around. For you gamers out there, you'll know what I mean. There's 1) ''finding rare loot'', and then there's 2) '''finding rare loot'''. Pay attention. ''Finding'' rare loot and '''finding''' rare loot is <u>not</u> the same thing. Are you with me? If not, Let me try to explain. 1) In an RPG, people think you can ''find'' rare loot, but in actuality, you can't actively ''find'' rare loot. If you could actively ''find'' rare loot, the game would be too easy, too short, and unfun. 2) So, what games actually let you do is actively loot. You keep actively looting by killing monsters that drop loot. While you are actively looting, once in a blue moon, once every now and then, you will '''find''' that the monster will drop rare loot. But notice how active this process is. You will never '''find''' rare loot if you are just waiting around idly hoping that it falls from the sky in front of you. I hope this is making sense to you. If not, I'll repeat it. When you actively '''find''' rare loot, you aren't actually actively ''finding'' rare loot. What you are actually doing is (while looting) '''finding''' those moments you ''find'' rare loot. Two very different definitions of find, and you should be doing the bolded kind, not the italicized. In Active Focus terms, continue living a life where you are visually exploring the world. You have to continue visually exploring because active focus will never happen if there is no opportunity for it to happen. Also, while you are visually exploring, don't try to force active focus to happen because active focus is not in your control. You are not in control of active focus happening. The only two things you are in control of is how much visual exploration you do, and how much effort you put in to level up your ability to notice how your visual exploration is going. So, while you live life, Focus on these three: 1) look at things, 2) notice changes in your vision, and 3) notice changes in your vision as you look at things. In other words, to find active focus <u>don't</u> try to ''find'' active focus, just do these 3 things, and maybe while doing them you'll '''find''' that you ''find'' active focus.

Finally, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRAjKaExZ2M

=='''TL;DR:'''==

1) Your own internal visual experiences is what you have to pay attention to. Only you can educate yourself to increase your understanding of what you see. The more you spend time noticing your vision, and the more nuance you are able to notice about your vision, the better your vision journey will go. Nobody but yourself can take your visual journey.

2) Instead of trying to make active focus happen, Be deliberate in choosing an environment/lifestyle that allows you to explore the world visually in various ways. "Exploring the world visually in various ways" means Be considerate about how each different way of visually focusing has a different effect on how your vision looks like to you (different ways to visually focus include but are not limited to, a holistic-whole-view focus, or an attention-to-detail focus, or a focus on how an object fits in its setting, while you and/or object is moving, while you and/or object is stationary, paying attention to multiple objects, paying attention to just one object, looking at distant things, looking at close-up things, or looking at mid-range things) 

3) I say it again, you are not in control of active focus happening. Also, quantity matters. The only two things you are in control of is increasing the amount of visual exploration you do, and improving your ability to notice how your visual exploration is going.

=='''TL;DR of the TL;DR:'''==

Active focus is paying attention to the nuance of how your vision looks '''to you''', familiarizing yourself with different vision-related attentional modes, maximizing the quantity of visual exploration you do, and preferably increasing the quality of your visual exploration by leaning towards dynamic visual activities. 

=='''TL;DR of the TL;DR of the TL;DR:'''==

Pay attention to your internal experience and do things as you do that.

=='''P.S.,''' ==
Want to hear more discussion about different vision-related attentional modes? Check out this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwQhKFMxmDY&t=4913 from 1:21:53-1:27:42

==PPS==

Want an overly simple definition for active focus?  The [[EndMyopia_Glossary]] definition is as simple as it gets.

[[Category:Project AF]]