It’s easy for me to think I know what’s about to happen. The routine of my morning meditation lulls me into assuming things will unfold the same as they did yesterday, or last week. Familiarity presents a danger, because instead of experiencing the moment, I am experiencing my memory of a moment, a shallow, mental image that fogs the window. I am not fully here, I’m a tiny step removed from the current of my life; literally, the current moment.
“Danger” may seem an exaggeration. After all, we can’t avoid feeling the familiarity of things. But there is tangible loss when the familiar fools me into thinking I know this space. When I zone out, I miss out. If I stay curious about what is here, my perceptions sharpen. Noticing the tension in my shoulders, I start to sense the fibers and connective tissue inside the muscle. Grounding attention where I touch the floor, I feel the bones in my feet and whether the ligaments are tight or loose. Subtle emotions appear under my breath; sensations without names knock at the window. The quality of my attention alters, gathering itself, becoming finer, more spacious, attuned to the currents moving through me.
The river of experience is always moving, always opening to more. This may not be apparent in the moment, when it feels as if I am fully open to awareness as it is, that what I see is the observable limit. But then the fog clears, the horizon extends, and I’m invited to travel further on.
The danger continues when I leave my meditation. Walking about my house or my neighborhood, everything is familiar, an invitation to sleepwalk. My fearful ego does not want this heightened awareness. In her overprotectiveness, she wants to shout: “There’s nothing new here; stop paying attention to everything; you can rest your gaze; go back to thinking, ruminating, catastrophizing, fantasizing, strategizing, classifying, worrying, looping through the same tired troubles you’ve nursed for years; those aches are comfortable.”
I will always drift back and forth with the tides of attentiveness, but what if I could break away just a bit, and play with staying ten percent more curious, more conscious, throughout the day? I might pause to appreciate the fleeting shades of shape and color I often pass without notice. I’d take in more of the fullness of others, listening past my first impressions. Looking across the steaming coffee at my beloved, she would become both more dear and more mysterious. Hidden textures of meaning might reveal themselves at odd times, accruing wisdom all the while.
Over time, contemplative practice finds the cracks and seeps in. Spend enough time looking at how you look, and your looking looks differently. The realization dawns, beyond the intellectual, felt as a reality in body and soul, that consciousness is only partly in me. I am a spark of awareness, looking outward, observing the dance of inner and outer objects. And consciousness is also at large. Awareness is looking alongside me, sharing and augmenting the observation, inviting me to see the comfort of the familiar and beyond it.
Photo by krzhck on Unsplash