Introduction
It’s pretty early in the night though I’m still feeling drowsy for some reason. But for the sake of consistency and progress, I’ll endure.
This morning, as I was doing my Sandhyavandanam(a form of meditation, if you will), I was struck with the thought of consciousness. Though, what exactly do I mean by this?
My definition would be that conscious actions are achieved with remarkable focus and attention to all the details. I admit that this is a strict definition and I would also point out that if this were the definition that I’d stick with, I’d claim to be a rarely conscious person. That sounds dull. But my opinion stands at that.
Perhaps the use of ‘achieve’ is misleading. I think maybe ‘gain’ is more appropriate. I think that it’s something that can constantly be improved and doesn’t have an end destination as such. As you pay more attention to your activities, you inherit this sense of consciousness and develop it incrementally with greater attention.
If we continue this relationship, you might question, ‘what happens after you cross x amount of attention?’ Well, I wouldn’t be the right person to answer that but I do believe that you keep gaining a level of understanding with your environment and there’s no plateauing… I think after a certain point, your attention would be so elevated that you can completely answer to the environment seamlessly.
By saying this, I’m allowing my imagination to take over, but, for a moment, let’s stick to general reality…
With any activity we do, there’s a certain level of attention we attach with it. The greater attention you pay, (generally) the greater the understanding of the scenario. I find this trend incredible. It really paints the picture well that paying attention to anything can help you grasp anything easily. This gives me confidence although, how do I develop that attention?
From my limited ‘experience’ of 5-minute daily meditations for 4 years, I can point out several things. Before I enlighten you though, I’m going to checkpoint myself.
Checkpoint
I am a learner and am vastly interested in the meditation space and am fascinated by how much can be achieved through the various forms of meditation. I particularly admire(am actually a fan of) Sadhguru who encourages the idea of ‘inner engineering’ where you focus on enhancing the capabilities of the body and the mind. Much of my learnings are from him and have been a great insight into the ‘conscious world’. I have also read 2 of his book including Inner Engineering and Adiyogi which are divine! I am developing and beginning to realise a few things which are captivating me to continue my spiritual experience.
Ok, now let’s go back to how we can develop the attention.
Taking breaks
I’ve already written about this in a previous post, but let me reiterate with some additions. Answer this. When in your day do you take time out to do nothing? For most of us, the answer would be a pretty negligible number. Ok, we’ve recognised the flaw, let’s actually work on it! The vast majority of us have forgotten our true purpose to ‘live life’ and this still baffles me. We’ve trapped ourselves in systems where it’s hard to escape for a ‘proper’ break. We need to dedicate more time to go out and spend time with nature or understand ourselves(by sitting down and observing). We’ve all been gifted with our bodies and minds. It’s time to explore them!
As I was doing my meditation this morning, I had the thought – ‘why is that we can feel liquids on our skin but we can’t feel the very liquid that runs inside our skin – blood?’ I was fascinated. And I attach this question to the idea of consciousness. I’m sure that if I can pay enough attention and cultivate an understanding of my body, I can definitely become aware of my own body more.
Another thought for you… Our breathing systems are so advanced and have so many ‘features’ that we completely ignore. We breathe in 40-minute cycles where each nostril takes most of the ‘workload’. So for 40 minutes, we predominantly breathe through one nostril and then it swaps. This is an approximation but it’s certainly true. And again, it’s a case of paying enough attention to realise the difference.
Such minute details are only known to me but I’ve never experienced them. There are some yogis and spiritual people who have spent their lifetimes actually discovering the Earth and their bodies and those kinds of people have provided insightful information similar to the 2 pointers I have just mentioned above.
I feel like more of us need to do this. We are blinded from our origin and dear Earth by our own creations and that’s unfortunate. We go out for a Nature walk as a way of getting air and spending time with the family. I don’t want to dismiss the fact that it should be a fun time though I do think that we need to engage ourselves in consciously paying attention to more things. Despite my limited experience, I am a hypocrite in saying this but it’s a priority for me too! Let’s work on it together. Let’ be more conscious of Nature when we go out for a walk next time.
Pay attention
I don’t know a better way to become attentive than to pay more attention! As I am writing I could easily pay attention to the contact between the keyboard and my fingertips or my breath which is rather heavy… Though, due to my lack of simultaneous attention, I am mostly paying attention to the words I type and the music that’s playing in the background. I have hindered myself from seeing the ‘big picture’. This annoys me but at the same time gives me hope that, yes, I could be much more attentive and understand my surroundings better.
No time for conscious actions
Of course, there will be people who claim they “don’t have enough time” and to them, I say “that’s BS.” Everyone has time to pay attention to themselves or Mother Nature. Trust me, you’ll be enlightened if you just see things with a pinch of greater attention. After all, we are here to experience life! Not to carry on crouched in our beds scrolling through social media… I’ll stop this here but I do have a lot more thoughts on this topic. I’ll park that for another post. Till then, bye!
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