Reddit mentions of The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind

Spiritual practice. Find a tradition that speaks to you and start doing it. The Attention Revolution by Alan B. Wallace is an excellent place to start.

Here's a primer:

>
Most people would find their lives greatly enhanced just by attaining stage two of the ten stages. This level of development takes some effort, but it can be achieved by people who are living a busy life with career and family commitments as long as they are willing to set aside some time for meditation. It can dramatically improve the quality of everything you do and make you more resilient in the face of emotional and physical stressors. If that is your goal, there is no problem with using the techniques in this book for that purpose.

>However, as noted above, this book is also a guide for people who wish to go well beyond what are considered normal levels of attention. For most people, achieving stage three will require a greater commitment than an hour or two spent each day in meditation in the midst of an active life. The more advanced stages of attentional development are accessible to people who dedicate themselves to weeks or months of rigorous practice in a conducive environment. Progress beyond the fourth attentional stage requires a vocational commitment to this training, which may involve full-time practice for months or years at a stretch.

>If you traverse the ten stages of attentional development discussed in this book, the benefits are truly immense. Upon reaching the ninth stage, your mind is finely honed, freed from even the subtlest imbalances. At this point, it is said that you can focus effortlessly and unwaveringly upon your chosen object for at least four hours. At the beginning of this training, meditators are traditionally encouraged to practice for sessions of twenty-four minutes, which is one-sixtieth of a full day and night. At the culmination of this training, you should be able to sustain attention with unprecedented clarity for ten times that long.

>According to Tibetan oral tradition, among meditators who are well qualified to embark on this discipline, those of sharpest faculties may be able to achieve all ten stages within three months; those with “medium“ faculties may take six months; and those with “dull“ faculties may require nine months. Such estimates assume that the meditators are living in a contemplative environment and devoting themselves day and night to this disci- pline. The reference to sharp, medium, and dull faculties pertains to the level of talent and attentional balance individuals bring to this training. Just as some people are naturally gifted musicians, athletes, and mathematicians, so are some gifted with exceptional degrees of attentional stability and vivid- ness, which gives them a head start in this practice. Others may have an extraordinary level of enthusiasm and dedication to this training, and that will serve them well through the long months of hard work that it entails.

>This level of professional training may seem daunting and unfeasible to most readers of this book, but compare it to the training of Olympic athletes. Only a small number of individuals have the time, ability, and inclination to devote themselves to such training, which can appear at first glance to have little relevance for the diverse practical problems facing humanity today. But research on serious athletes has yielded many valuable insights concerning diet, exercise, and human motivation that are relevant to the general public. While the training of Olympic athletes is focused primarily on achieving physical excellence, this attentional train- ing is concerned with achieving optimal levels of attentional performance.

>Once the ninth level has been achieved, the meditator is ripe for an extraordinary breakthrough, entailing a radical shift in one’s nervous system and a fundamental shift of consciousness. One is now poised to achieve shamatha: one’s mind is now marvelously serviceable, capable of being used in a myriad of ways, and one’s body also is endowed with an unprecedented degree of suppleness and buoyancy. It is a remarkable achievement, unlike anything one has ever experienced before.

>Since the time of the Buddha, when people have asked Buddhist adepts about the nature of their practice, they have commonly answered, “Come and see!” In 1992, neuroscientists studying the effects of advanced medita- tive practice among Tibetan retreatants explained how they wanted to examine the neural and behavioral effects of meditation. One of the monks responded, “If you really want to understand the effects of meditation, I’ll be glad to teach you. Only through your own firsthand experience will you truly know the effects of such practice.”

>Let’s now begin working on the first stage, using the technique of mind- fulness of breathing.

I hear this brought up a lot but it feels too 'new-agey' and capitalizing on the general lack of understanding proper meditation/mindfulness like most books like this one are. I may be absolutely wrong and perhaps some day I'll give it a go. However, I'd like to recommend three sources that have provided the best perspective to me and helped (still help) me weed out all the wrong conceptions and practices out of my mind:

• With Each & Every Breath (I'm currently reading this one.) - Right from the start this book is relentless in its goal to teach you meditation that is fruitful and right. It's also free. Here's a paragraph that sums what this book is about:
  
  >When you want to master a meditation technique, it’s good to know the premises underlying the technique. That way you have a clear idea of what you’re getting into. Knowing the premises also helps you understand how and why the technique is supposed to work. If you have doubts about the premises, you can try them on as working hypotheses, to see if they really do help in dealing with the problems of stress and suffering. Meditation doesn’t require that you swear allegiance to anything you can’t fully understand. But it does ask you to give its premises a serious try.
  
  
• I'd also recommend a set of talks that focus specifically and directly on what it means to meditate on the breath. I view it as complimentary to the book above but it also have complimentary audio to it.
  
• Finally, The Attention Revolution - This book's goal is to teach you to meditate but with the goal to achieve the ability of right concentration. However, this also leads to all the benefits of meditation. It's just that its perspective is on training the mind to better focus. Loving kindness is there and all kinds of other accompanying meditation techniques. So direct, so lucid, free of fluff and false promises, no romantisizing, no mysticism, lots of connections with the origins of the practice to guide a better understanding, lots of perspective for the novice, intermediate or the most devoted practitioner. There's so much information in it, it requires a few readings to get all of it. I've reread some chapters a few times and I still unpack it. Almost every sentence is full of useful information.
  
  As for 'mindfulness' and its modern face I'd strongly recommend this essay (Beyond McMindfulness) and also reading about "Right Mindfulness" (dhammatalks.org has a lot to say on this topic but I'm pretty sure there are other sources too). The concept has been changed so much from its original meaning so it has lost most of the solid philosphy behind it. Simply "pay attention to the present without judgement" leads to nowhere. Meditation and mindulness have a very specific goal in mind. Everyone's desire to meditate has one very specific goal in mind.
  
  On a side note, I'd really love to explore the difference you talked about between feelings and thoughts in more depth. If you can share what else you have read, I'd appreciate it.
  
  Cheers.

Yeah, you need to try to increase the effort to keep the chatter away; you have to play it by ear though, because too much effort at focusing on the breath can increase the thoughts. Basically, really try hard to keep thoughts away, but if you notice that they're increasing, back off of the effort.

EDIT: I don't know how people feel about recommending books, but I found this book to be really helpful navigating the subtle application of energy during shamatha.