This is an example of what a meditative exploration of the sense of hearing can be like.
What opens up for you when you take a few minutes to devote your attention to the sense of hearing in the way you experience it?
Category: sensation
The Power of Pause
The other day I was walking the scenic route to the grocery store, ruminating over something or another. I turned the corner and started down the hill. A thought in the background: “Oh. That’s a nice breeze.”
I walked a few more steps. And said out loud “No. Wait.” and walked backwards a few steps.
Came fully into my senses. Felt the breeze, soft as butterfly wings, caress my face.
Heard it’s language change from tree to tree.
Smelled fresh mulch.
Pine.
Eucalyptus.
Sniffed the air some more.
Smelled coffee.
And breakfast wafting from someone’s house.
More.
The crispness of mountains,
And the promise of snow.
The beauty of taking pause is that it creates the opportunity to fully experience where you are, in the moment. It can be a minute and spontaneous reset, if you are open to receive it.
Like this morning while I was out walking and stopped to look at this rose, fresh after the rain. Really look at it. Watch rain drops quiver. One slid into the other, uniting. Whispers of colour in the shimmering cloud grey light.
Getting up close enough to see the world upside down through the lens of a raindrop.
I was half tempted to kiss a raindrop.
Whatever had my attention that day blew off with the wind, but what grabbed my attention has stayed with me. I can bring it up at any time and savour it. While doing mundane tasks. Before a meeting to center myself. At night as a prequel before drifting off to sleep. As a doorway to meditation, wandering through the experience and feeling all the sensations that arise.
I invite you to give it a try. Pause. Even for a few seconds. What does the keyboard feel like under your fingers? What do you sense in your body? Is there a colour theme around you? Does anything come up that’s been calling for attention? Did the pause spark a creative urge, or present a solution?
Take a moment.
Pause.
Surrender
One of the ways I enjoy being in the world is by creating music and art. Both the music and art in this video are my original creations.
This composition of mine has a theme of surrender. Often seen as “giving up”, there’s an opportunity to seeing surrender as giving over to a new way of being.
Surrender to grace.
Surrender to inner peace.
Surrender to a state of relaxed awareness- maybe even to a few moments of sleep.
Surrender to love with an open heart.
I hope you enjoy this offering of mine. Best with headphones, and not while driving or doing a task that requires focus for safety.
Thoughts Revealed on an Afternoon Walk
Consider
The Soul is a chorus of all our experience.
A friend told me once that every sound made never disappears completely. It eventually becomes imperceptible, but is still there.
Every laugh
Every word of anger
Every musical note that’s been played or sung
Every lover’s sigh
Every cry of sorrow
Every mantra chanted
Every first inhale
Every last exhale.
Continually around us and reforming.
Our being is a dance of all existence.
Molecules and atoms vibrating.
Bouncing
Dancing with each other
Like the murmuration of birds-
One time an elipse folding in on itself
Another time a tree
Then a rock
Then you
Then me.
A continual dance of connectedness
We are
We are one
We are everything
We are
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(You can read about Gugliemo Marconi’s theory of sound decay here https://www.americanscientist.org/article/viva-voce)
Visualizing Sensation
Today while walking, two men passed me. They smelled of old books.
Not long afterwards, I saw them admiring a tree. One patted it with affection and said “I’m sure this tree has stories to tell.” The other nodded.
Later I saw them again, looking at the plants in the garden. First one would say something about it, then the other. Sharing their knowledge, not in competition, but in conversation. They looked at each other often in the way of loving understanding that only people who’ve been companions a long time do. In my head I named the men Verso and Recto… facing pages in a book.
I sat on a bench and began to doodle, as I sometimes do there. Doodling for me is a way to turn off my Inner Narrator- that constant voice in my head. I don’t think about what comes next; I just let the pen go where it will on the paper. This time, I realized.. I was drawing the way the garden sounded and felt. I was drawing sensation.. not what I saw. I tuned in and continued with this focus. I will leave it to you to interpret what I was hearing, seeing, and feeling.
I’ve done this with creating music, or dancing before, but not drawing, and it felt amazing.
Will you take a moment to let your Inner Narrator settle and silence? What do you hear? What do you feel? What does that look like?
I’d love to see what you come up with!
craftingthespirit.com 