At some point during almost any meditation, you notice that you have been lost in thought for a while. Such noticing is ordinary and natural, and it happens to everyone. Each time it happens, your attention can settle back towards the simple fact of being aware, which was present all along.
Attention is like a torch’s beam of light that travels from the bulb to the object that is being illuminated. Attention is like the light of knowing that travels from its source, awareness, to the object that is known: a thought, feeling, sensation or perception. And just as you can trace the beam of light in two directions, either towards the object that is being illuminated or back to the bulb from which it proceeds, so you can trace your attention in two directions: towards the content of experience, your thoughts, feelings, sensations and so on, or in the other direction, backwards, inwards, selfwards, towards the presence of awareness from which it arises.