Are you being aware of your surroundings? All the time?
Lots of people may answer a straight YES without even thinking about what is really going on outside and inside their body.
Meditation for awareness is a great practice to be totally awake and understanding of the reality of yourself, your being, and what is around you.
How to develop your Awareness:
You can stand straight with your feet together, or sitting on a chair, or anywhere you feel comfortable. With practice you can even do it in few seconds while waiting the green at the traffic light.
Close your eyes, realize the position of all your body, starting from your spine. Keep it straight from the tailbone to the head, but don’t force it. Relax your muscles and any tension in your body.
Breathe with your low abdomen and while breathing, feel the air, the smell, and the temperature of the air coming into your nose through your lungs, don’t over breathe, just feel it.
Pay attention to the sounds, what can you ear? Distant sounds, background sounds, traffic, birds, waves, wind, your breathing, your earth beating. Try to notice any sound that is around you. Don’t force your hearing, just let the sounds reach you like a open radar that is capturing any incoming wave.
Slowly move your tongue around your mouth and teeth, roll it around, what does it taste like? What does your tongue feel while touching your teeth, the gums and the rest of your oral cavity?
Keeping your eyes closed, move your eyes around, do you see dark or any color or many colors? Don’t look with your mind, look just use your eyes but keep them closed. Realize that the eyes are just projecting the colors of the world around you in to your mind. The light hit the objects and the colors of the object are reflected into your eyes. Be aware of what things really are. With your eyes closed you may see black, or white or other colors. It depends on your eyelid and how much light is pointed on it from the external side. It doesn’t mean anything what you see with your eyes closed. What matters is that you notice your real and actual sight in that moment, whatever is it.
Feel your whole body, what is touching your body, how is the feeling of your clothes on your skin, what is the temperature like. Notice the feelings of your being, the feeling of your breathing, feeling of your body, feeling of your taste, feeling of your sight, feeling of your hearing. All at once.
Practice to have them all together at once. Don’t hold them, let them go. Let them flow and let them capture always new feelings.
This is your awareness of the present moment.
Slowly open you eyes but keep that feeling with you. Keep the same breathing, notice the sounds and your body. The eyes start to perceive the colors and you can see things exactly for what they are.
Keeping this Awareness all the time:
Start with a session of few minutes a day, and try to do it as often as possible until you are able to connect your 5 senses all the time in your day. Forget your crazy thoughts, if you are paying attention to your awareness your mind won’t be able to create its own thoughts. The process to focus on your 5 senses at once is already a big job for your brain, and your mind is simply not able to process other jobs (i.e. open eye dreams, weird thoughts flowing).
The more you practice the more you will be able to keep this awareness with you and eventually will become part of you in your every day life, even without closing your eyes in any moment.
Your thoughts come from your memory of your past. They make you stagnant. Your memory is always running in background. But if your mind is fully engaged in the present then your life start flowing with the present.
The now, this very moment is made by you being aware of what is happening within and around you. You will realize by yourself that the past is unchangeable, the future is unwritten and the present is the only moment that you can actually act on it.
This practice meets Tao and Zen teachings. After few sessions, many Tao and Zen quotes will become more clear to you.
In Philosophical words:
Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self requires strength;
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of will power.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.
(Tao Te Ching)
Keep your mind free from useless thoughts and always ready to be filled for that precise moment.
(Laozi)
The Way of the supreme (Tao) is not difficult,
If only people will give up preferences.
Like not, dislike not.
Be illuminated.
(Xinxin Ming translated by Lok Sang Ho)
“The usefulness of a pot comes from its emptiness.”
In simple words:
Can you reach an awareness like Jason Bourne?
Keep practicing this meditation all the time.
Make it part of your life and absorb it as automatic mental attitude.
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