Are you a Lantern, or a Spotlight?

Control of our attention determines the quality of our lives.

While writing a good friend’s wedding last summer, I stumbled across this quote from J.D. McClatchy: “Love is the quality of attention we pay to things.”

With stunning simplicity, J.D. points to a fundamental but often overlooked aspect of our lives: the quality of our attention is everything. Learning to control our attention is a fundamental skill in improving the quality of our lives. We can make this esoteric concept concrete with a simple metaphor.

Think of attention as your “light” (gonna let it shine…) by which consciousness perceives. The form of this light can be more like a lantern, or more like a spotlight. The difference is how we are directing our attention, which becomes the “shape” our perception takes.

Here’s a comparison of how Spotlight and Lantern consciousness can feel:

Spotlight Consciousness =

Lighting up one thing/idea.

Deep concentration & focus.

Intense and steady.

Making sense of something, structure.

Shutting out superfluous info.

Clear boundaries.

Associated with strong identification with self, “I”, subjective.

Egocentric (self-referential, self as center).

Penetrating, archetypal masculine.

Lantern Consciousness =

Lighting up the whole space around us.

Taking in all things equally.

Soft and broad.

Sense of wonder, exploring without knowing.

Moving aimless from thing to thing.

Spontaneous, indiscriminate.

Indeterminate boundaries.

Associated with interconnectivity, weaker “I”, objectivity.

Allocentric (meaning impersonal, objective, ‘how things are’, part of bigger picture).

Receptive, archetypal feminine.

Alison Gopnik developed the lantern vs spotlight metaphor to describe how babies learn. Babies shine their awareness evenly and indiscriminately in all directions around them, like a lantern. This allows for lots of exploration and noticing, but provides little support for focus and execution.

Adults, by contrast, learn to focus their awareness into a beam, like a spotlight. It is capable of maintaining intense focus on a small set of ideas or tasks, and works great to get things done. But it misses key information outside the lines, and can pigeonhole us into rigid and narrow ways of thinking. Over time, what we repeatedly focus our attention on begins to influence and even define our sense of self and identity.

When we learn to change the shape of our awareness (lantern vs spotlight), we can create greater agency for ourselves.

Sometimes we want the spotlight. We need to zero in, impervious to distractions, clear & intense, like the sun through a magnifying glass.

Sometimes we want the lantern. We need to open up, soak in every detail, and dissolve into a wide-eyed curiosity, taking in and being taken by what’s around us.

Both forms of awareness are equally useful when applied skillfully. The trick becomes controlling our ‘awareness aperture’, like the lens of a camera.

This mental muscle allows us to make our attention responsive, and we can choose a lantern or a spotlight, depending on what the moment calls for. When we train our mind this way, we give ourselves the power to choose the quality of our attention. We can stay focused when we need to concentrate, or be open and perceptive when we need to take more in.

An example, Spotlight to Lantern:

In a meeting, you need to focus intently on what a prospective client is saying. Understanding every detail is critical to your negotiation. You’re in spotlight mode. Then, your intuition tells you to momentarily switch to lantern and get a read of the room. You notice another key stakeholder is checked out, scrolling on their phone. You ask them a question to re-engage them, and they bring up a key objection you were unaware of before, and might have cost you the deal.

An example, Lantern to Spotlight:

You’re enjoying a lovely day by a river, relaxing in your hammock. You are soaking in every sensation of the forest, becoming immersed in the sights, sounds and smells around you. This lantern moment feels relaxing and restorative, but you also brought a great book with you. You choose to become deeply absorbed in the wonders of the written word, and remain focused for an hour.

I’ll share a practice I adapted from the work of Rick Hansen and S.N. Goenka. It helps us switch from egocentric spotlight to allocentric lantern awareness. It’s wonderfully simple, and the key to doing it effectively is to repeat it often.

Here’s the technique:

To practice spotlight, focus your attention on what’s close to you, spatially. Bring your attention near your body, and the objects close at hand. Feel the things closest to you, even those making contact with you. Then, bring your attention inward. Fixate on the sensation of breath entering and exiting the nostril as a focal point of sensation.

Keep your attention there as long as you can, and if it’s interrupted by thought, start again. Stay with this practice for a few moments. Move from awareness of your body’s environment, to a clear focus on sensation of breath in the nostril.

This refines attention through dialing in on a particular sensation, and deepens our sense of inner experience.

To practice lantern, focus your attention on the periphery of your surroundings. Widen your awareness to the whole room, or if outside, to the middle distance & then the horizon, keeping the focus soft and the scope broad.

Keep your attention outward, taking in as much detail as you can from the external world, without focusing on anything specific. Allow your attention to drift from object to object, sensation to sensation, space to space…just drift and observe.

This will soften association with self, open our awareness, drop tension, and create a sense of spaciousness.

Both lantern and spotlight consciousness are powerful forms of perception. Our ability control our “awareness aperture” is the key. We can harness the benefits of both, without getting lost in either.

When have you felt your attention clear as a spotlight, and when do you feel lit up like a lantern? When do you notice the quality of attention you pay to things?