Pay More Attention to Perceptions that Don't Insist on Being Noticed
An attention exercise poorly disguised as a poem.
Instead of forcing yourself to relax when you’re not, become a connoisseur of comfortable sensations by detecting and savoring them more often than never.
Practice letting the uncomfortable ones be there, too. They’re inevitable. It’s no use waiting around for them to go away. Instead, spotlight any pleasant details you can find while letting the unpleasant ones play out in the background.
Don’t try to stop thinking or feeling. Thoughts and emotions are an inescapable part of the human experience. Trying to eliminate them is a misunderstanding of what practicing mindfulness is about.
Each moment is made up of a complex mixture of sensations and perceptions. It's impossible to notice all of them. We simplify this complexity by focusing on the perceptions that signal trouble without intending to. We do this incessantly and on autopilot because it helps conserve our limited attentional resources.
While mindfulness instruction usually focuses on breathing sensations, expanding the exploration to include other senses can make it more enjoyable and refreshing.
Below are some suggestions for incorporating pleasant visual and auditory perceptions into this liberating practice.
Rest in the Unrest
Say to yourself, "See rest…" Whisper it right into the ear of your mind. Say it out loud softly if nobody is around, or if your earbuds are in, even though you aren't talking to anyone or listening to anything through them. It’s just a word to remind you to notice, but saying it can trigger the kind of micro exploration that we habitually forego. So go for it. For a handful of seconds, about the length of an exhale... give your eyes a break from sorting the world out. If you can close them, gently steer your gaze into your own private darkness. If you can’t close them, or don't want to, notice how, even open, your eyes are willing to not make sense for a bit and to resist their trained impulse to decide what is beautiful and what is not. Savor the relief of neutral indecision. People might accuse you of zoning out. Let them. The joke's on them. Keep it to yourself. Give it to yourself for as long as you can. Refrain from explaining or suggesting they should give it a try. Just drink up the available rest with your eyes. Let others in on it indirectly the next time you turn your eyes toward them. Let them not even notice the difference. Say to yourself, "Hear rest…" and listen closely to any or all of the available sounds playing outside the boundaries of your mind. Don’t try to turn off your thoughts. Give your full attention to hearing the world for three or four seconds instead. Set the stage for the words in your head to wind down without coercion. Have you ever been able to force your mind to be quiet? Give it something to listen to other than your story. Say to yourself, "Feel rest..." and savor sensations you find in your body that aren’t begging for your attention. If there is time, repeat this sequence. If there is not time, find a bathroom to hide in and save yourself there. Any space with a door will work. An office, a car — even a cubicle if you keep your eyes open and practice a few times. Close the door, and let the world fix itself for a few minutes while you take a break from fixing yourself. If you fall asleep, they might look for you, but they will find you rested. They will probably not even ask what you were doing in the bathroom stall in the middle of the day for a few minutes longer than usual. They probably will not look for you. Try not to read into this too much. Try it at 2:00 in the morning when you're wide awake and tired of insisting on unconsciousness as the only rest that counts. Don’t wait for rest to force itself on you. Get sneaky. Do it right now. Steal it while nobody's looking. When you do, be prepared to find it lurking everywhere, tangled up in the unrest waiting for someone to notice. Don’t believe me? Please don’t believe me. See and hear and feel for yourself.