Attention is Magic

How Cultivating Focus Transforms Reality and Awakens the Self

Mr. Gurdjieff made it clear that if we didn’t study attention - not study in the ordinary way, but putting all our attention on developing that attention - we would arrive nowhere.

Olga de Hartmann in "Our Life With Mr Gurdjieff"

About a decade ago, I had a psychedelic experience that profoundly shook the foundations of my psyche. In that moment, I experienced consciousness as the fundamental force of reality. Under the influence of psilocybin, I felt my sense of self dissolve into a boundless sea of awareness. Colors pulsed with life, my senses blended together, and I sensed that consciousness wasn’t just in me—it was the fabric of everything. This wasn’t a thought; it was a visceral knowing. I understood that this insight couldn’t be proven to anyone else, but for me, it was undeniable.

From that point on, I could no longer view reality the same way. If consciousness truly is fundamental, then understanding its nature became a matter of supreme importance.

Attention: The Core of Consciousness

As I delved deeper, I realized that perhaps the most crucial aspect of consciousness is attention. If consciousness means awareness, there must be something to be aware of, and attention bridges the gap between consciousness and the world. Gurdjieff insisted that anyone serious about inner work must develop their attention as if it were a muscle. He taught that the organism’s attention is naturally limited but can be expanded through deliberate effort and practice.

My curiosity deepened when I encountered Ian McGilchrist, who offered a compelling perspective on attention:

Attention may sound dull, but it is an essential aspect of consciousness. In fact, it governs what it is that we turn out to be conscious of, and therefore plays a part in the coming into being of whatever exists for us.

and:

Attention is a moral act: it creates, brings aspects of things into being, but in doing so makes others recede. What a thing is depends on who is attending to it, and in what way.

These thinkers highlighted the idea that if free will exists anywhere, it exists in our attention. But who, or what, is directing that attention?

The Complex Relationship Between Attention and Intention

Attention it turns out is deeply connected to intention. The problem is that there is a difference between subconscious intention and cognitive intention. When these 2 systems clash we call that cognitive dissonance.

In practical terms, this means we often hold beliefs about our conscious intentions that mask the true influence of our subconscious intentions. For example, imagine walking through your office and encountering someone who makes you uncomfortable. You avoid them but later rationalize your behavior by telling yourself you simply chose a different route, most likely because you don’t like to think of yourself as skittish. This is just one of countless ways subconscious beliefs and intentions shape where we place our attention, ultimately influencing how we react and behave in various situations.

Cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz, in her exploration of our everyday perceptual limitations, explains that: “Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that.” This selective focus, primarily a function of the brain’s left hemisphere, prioritizes efficiency and goal-directed tasks, streamlining our daily routines. However, this left-hemisphere dominance may contribute to a sense of emotional disconnection, as it narrows our awareness to immediate priorities, often at the expense of broader, more enriching experiences. Consequently, this tunnel vision can render our days less fulfilling and memorable, leaving us trapped in a cycle of routine that feels largely unlived and unremarkable.

Gurdjieff used to say “the man doesn’t smoke a cigarette, the cigarette smokes the man”, as if to say that most outside objects that attract our attention do so magnetically and mechanically without our cognitive intention’s awareness.

That’s why he would often give people who asked him for advice the task of trying to do a small task, literally anything that would take them out of their normal habitual routine. He would often caution the student to not to try to pick a large aim too soon, it’s nearly impossible to complete even a small aim, he would warn. It would depend on the temperament of the student as to what task he might give them. For some who struggled with judgmentalism he might tell them to just not critique others for one week, or for someone shy he might have them introduce themselves to new people for one week, etc.

What often surprised students was their inability to complete even these modest aims. They would return baffled, frustrated by how difficult it was to maintain such simple intentions. This difficulty revealed a critical insight: our capacity for conscious intention is far more limited than we imagine. Most of our daily actions are governed by subconscious influences, ingrained biases, and reactive habits that operate beneath the surface of awareness.

True conscious will is rare because our attention is habitually hijacked by external stimuli and internal conditioning. We live in a state of mechanicalness, where our senses and emotions pull us in countless directions without our conscious choice. This mechanical living means that even when we think we are acting intentionally, much of our behavior is automatic and reactive.

What was Gurdjieff’s solution to this dilemma?

The path out of this mechanical state begins with somatic attention—a focused awareness directed inward toward the body, senses, and emotions. By cultivating this somatic attention, we start to observe the subconscious impulses and habitual reactions that normally operate unnoticed. This practice is often called self-remembering—a state of divided attention where one simultaneously observes oneself while engaging with the world.

Self-remembering is not merely mindfulness; it is an active, intentional effort to witness the flow of sensations, emotions, and thoughts without being swept away by them. This heightened awareness creates a space between stimulus and response, allowing conscious choice to emerge.

Attention Creates and Destroys

Attention is not merely passive observation—it is a creative force. William James famously said, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” By choosing where we place our attention, we literally shape our reality. Attention can bring something into existence, or it can erase it from our subjective experience. Consider how a simple shift in attention can transform a mundane moment into a profound revelation, or how ignoring something can effectively remove it from our lived reality.

Quantum mechanics adds a fascinating dimension to this idea. Physicist John Wheeler proposed that reality emerges from a field of possibilities, collapsing into actuality only when observed. Wheeler called this the "participatory universe," suggesting that our attention—our conscious observation—plays a fundamental role in creating reality itself. As physicist Pascual Jordan put it, “Observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it.”

In other words, things may not even exist in a definite state until we put our attention on them. Attention, then, is not just a passive receiver of reality—it is an active participant in its creation.

The Illusion of Free Will and the Need for Unified Attention

Yet, paradoxically, our attention is rarely under our conscious control. Neuroscientific studies on free will, such as those by Benjamin Libet, have shown that our brains initiate decisions milliseconds before we become consciously aware of them. This suggests that much of our attention is directed by unconscious processes, internal biases, and habitual patterns. Our subjective biases work in tandem with external stimuli, creating a feedback loop that often leaves us feeling powerless, as if our attention is being pulled by invisible strings.

Gurdjieff recognized this fragmentation of attention as the root of human suffering. He taught that our attention is scattered, divided among competing impulses, desires, and distractions. To awaken, we must unify our attention, bringing it under conscious control. Only then can we truly exercise free will.

Ancient Magic and Modern Mind Science

This understanding of attention as a creative force is not new. Ancient magical traditions have long recognized attention as the key to manifesting reality. Rituals, spells, and ceremonies across cultures—from Hermeticism to shamanism—are fundamentally about directing attention with intention. Aleister Crowley famously defined magic as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.” In other words, magic is attention consciously directed toward a desired outcome.

Modern spiritual and self-help traditions echo this ancient wisdom. Books like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich or Neville Goddard’s teachings emphasize the power of focused attention and visualization to manifest desired realities. As Goddard succinctly put it, “Imagination creates reality.” These practices are essentially modern forms of magic, harnessing the creative power of attention to shape our lives.

Attention as the Ultimate Magic

Attention, then, is magic in its purest form. It creates and destroys, shapes and reshapes reality. It collapses quantum possibilities into tangible experiences. Yet, most of us remain unaware of this profound power, allowing our attention to be hijacked by external distractions and internal biases.

Gurdjieff used to say that in order to “do”, in other words to create a goal and actually achieve it, we must unite three things, our aim, our wish, and our will. Aim is a specific goal, wish is a specific feeling, will is the energy of the body directed toward the aim and the wish. If all of these are aligned then we may be on the path to our goal.

But how long can we stay on the path to our goal? Half the battle must be to determine what it is we actually want. The other half of the battle is keeping that attention and intention locked in without straying too far from course. Many people have great ideas that turn into half-baked project because they can’t sustain the effort needed to break the resistance of their lives and build momentum into their new goal.

To reclaim our attention is to reclaim our power. It is to awaken from the mechanical sleep Gurdjieff warned us about, and to consciously participate in the creation of our reality. As Simone Weil beautifully expressed, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

It is also the rarest and purest form of magic. By deliberating directing our attention to a certain goal and putting our whole efforts into sustaining our attention in service of our goal we become more than just ourselves but we harmonize with the greater will of the universe.

But it takes courage to dream and live out your dream despite the roadblocks you encounter along the way and and all the temptations to do something easier or more convenient.

As Terence Mckenna once said:

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.

Ultimately, the question of who or what directs our attention leads us inward, toward the very core of our being. It invites us to explore the mystery of consciousness, to discover the source from which attention arises. In doing so, we not only reclaim our attention—we reclaim ourselves.

As Gurdjieff warned, without this intentional cultivation, we risk arriving nowhere. But with it, we open ourselves to the possibility of awakening—to a life lived consciously, purposefully, and fully present.