Meditation Starts with the Senses
Our senses tell us about the world. We must transcend them to gain greater wisdom and understanding of our true nature. Mindfulness brings us to the present and gives us more clarity and sensitivity. Meditation opens the door to something much greater—our infinite selves.
We experience life through the senses, so it is hard to imagine existing without them. They keep us grounded while locking us to the clock as our bodies remind us what they need and when. There’s no escaping hunger, thirst, or the need for sleep, and time stops for no one. To tap into the timeless, we must go beyond the senses, but the journey starts with mindfulness.
Mindfulness – Tasting Life to the Full
You may not know it, but you live in multiple universes, and it’s simpler than you think. Each of your senses is a gateway to a separate world—sight, sound, or smell, for example. Your brain pulls these sensations together to build a unified picture you can understand.
Mindfulness is about paying attention to this moment and savouring every aspect of the experience. Life becomes richer when we tune into all the senses, which means observing the inner and outer sensory worlds. When we stop to notice the moment, we can find stillness.
Meditation—Staying Mindful of the Mind
If mindfulness is about staying present and fully tasting the senses—an activity focused on receiving information from our surroundings and how our bodies feel—meditation is a reflection. Meditation is about watching the watcher. Who or what is the entity that feels cold, sees the rainbow, or is aware of its breathing?
Finding Stillness
One of the goals of mindfulness and meditation is to find stillness. However, the outer and inner worlds are rarely still. Take the sense of hearing, for example. You could say that stillness in this universe is silence, but you are unlikely to find it.
Let’s say we play the “what’s left?” game by asking what’s left when a sound is acknowledged and ignored. It’s easy at the start as we dismiss the loudest noises. What’s left are a bunch of other quieter sounds that come to the surface as our mind settles and focuses. Even if we were in a quiet room, we would soon notice the sound of our breathing.
The same goes for the inner world. Once you pay attention to the mind, you notice that it never stops whirring, throwing up thoughts, memories, and associations. Yes, it may shut up occasionally but almost as soon as it does, stuff arises to fill the vacuum.
Become the Stillness
If it is no more still inside than outside, where can we find stillness? The answer lies in our awareness. The deeper we go in our exploration of the senses—looking for the sound of silence, the space that holds everything together, the blank canvas where thoughts are written—the stiller our awareness becomes.
Every sound, every movement, every sensation that we notice and zoom in on is a distraction from the stillness. We can’t focus on everything at once, but, if we are focused on one thing, we miss everything else. Therefore, we try not to focus on anything. Practising stillness is practising the art of letting it all wash over us.
The Paradox of Stillness
Although we can’t find stillness in any of the senses, they can still lead us to it. The stillness is there. It is the space within which the sensory world exists. It is the darkness that is filled with light, the silence that is broken by sound, and the numbness that becomes filled with sensation.
The paradox is that as we reach out for that stillness, we are moving from the centre. But we are the stillness. We are the darkness. At our centre, our pure awareness, we are empty, dark, and inactive. We are the universe before the Big Bang. When we find that silence between the ticks of the clock or between the in-breath and out-breath, we come home to our truth.
We are Yin. We are silence. We are numbness. We are darkness.
And from the stillness, life, Yang, erupts.
Mindfulness is at the heart of what I do, whether I am writing, teaching or speaking from a stage. Ghostwriting is much more than pulling words together to tell a story. I wear people’s souls. My job is to go deeper, hear what isn’t said, see what isn’t shown, and feel others’ experiences. I am a professional empath.
If you feel that I may be the right person to help you share your message, get in touch.