The Glass Box Exercise

Purpose: To make clear to us the powerful distracting factor of our own mind.

Materials: A TV set, one hour of time.

Exercise: Welcome to the Glass Box Exercise, in which we remain seated before a box with a glass front and a plastic back.

We sit for one full hour just trying to see the TV as a simple glass box-to reject our childhood conditioning that it’s a TV set which provides amusement, entertainment and important information.

We try to sit for one hour without allowing ourselves to be drawn into the drama, the conflict, the distractions with which we are so cleverly bombarded. ‘Just a box,’ we repeat to ourselves, ‘it’s just a plain old box, that’s all; there’s nothing significant happening-just some changes in light and some sounds, but I mustn’t forget that it’s just a box.’

Of course, to be effective at all, this focus on the TV set as a simple plastic box with a glass front should be unbroken throughout the whole hour.

Distractions will come. In the glass box exercise-or The Ultimate Video Game-where is the distracting factor? Is it in the television set, in the video, or where?. The process is the same: the mind continually wants to associate with what’s happening on the set.

(This exercise is excerpted from the article "The Power of Attention", a talk given by E. J. Gold)