So what happens if your attention drifts again before you even get back to where you last lost awareness? You just do the same thing: turn around again, get back into TA, and walk back to the point where it drifted the second time, then continue the journey back to the previous point.
In theory, you might spend the rest of the journey just zigzagging to and fro between two points, each time slipping into a daydream before you have retraced your steps. But in practice I find that the sheer discipline of having to retrace steps does drive the mind to stop its wandering and really hold TA. So with a little practice you will find that you can walk for, say, half an hour and know that most of that time you were in a state of intense, wordless awareness.
The beauty of this exercise is that, because it demands more of you, it is actually much easier than sitting still in a chair and trying to be totally aware. It is a great exercise.
EXERCISE 4: INNER AWARENESS
Answer this question: Do you feel different after such a walk?
What I am asking you to do, firstly, is to practise a sort of inner TA—just turn your senses inward and become aware of your whole inner state. Just hold that state (like a Cup) for as long as you like before answering the question: Do I feel different?
You will feel different. In which case, you can, if you wish, go on to explore what is different by being more analytical. What is your bodily sensation, your metal state, do you feel more aware? More peaceful? Or whatever.
This exercise links back to the first one where you looked at your inner response to music heard in different ways—is it different when standing or sitting? Now we ask: are things different when we practise total awareness? What has it left you with?
SUMMARY FOR WEEK ONE
We want to explore our psychic potential. We may have rational resistance to the whole idea of psychic sensing, so we begin by increasing our sensitivity to subtle sensory data at the edge of perception, rather than immediately going full-on for “clairvoyance”.
We may also have another form of resistance, a dislike of flaky, fey New Age faddism or a sense that, in a world of so much pain and deprivation, it is sheer bourgeois self-indulgence to want to increase sensitivity, or that discrimination is a dirty word and should be reduced, not enhanced. To overcome that resistance, we focus on the joy of exploration, rather than allowing ourselves to become victims to sensitivity.
So when, in the last experiment, I ask: “What has it left you with?”, I am expecting some sort of positive answer. Most people seem to feel good for a while after such an experience. Total awareness adds value to life, and its practice is good for us.
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
DOES IT MATTER IF I CAN'T FIND TIME ALONE TO DO THESE EXERCISES?
The first thing I noted in the feedback from these exercises was how readily they could be adapted to suite different daily conditions. I left them simple and flexible because I know that many people are committed to busy work and social schedules, and the exercises could be adjusted to suit these.
For example, it had not occurred to me that the walking exercise might be attempted by a person using a wheelchair, but one of the people on the course did that and their observations were all the more interesting for that:
This one was personally very difficult but interesting for me. As I use a manual wheelchair, movement in this state is quite strange, particularly given the fact that the situation was overwhelmingly kinaesthetic in nature, almost to the exclusion of other senses. I am usually hyper aware of the contours of the ground I cover, but in practising this exercise I found myself actually paying less attention to my surroundings, and more to the sensations of my body, my hands against wheel rims, muscular movements and tightness, my breath, etc.
One participant was practising awareness in a public place—a courthouse—expanding his listening outwards: “So, I'm sat there, hearing more and more—the inane chatter of lawyers, the mobile phones outside, the grumbling of the central heating…” Then he heard a mumbled conversation about a potential criminal deal, and reported it. “A quick word to a security guard, and crime has been fought for one day, all thanks to [this] excercise!” Not a result I was expecting, but an interesting comment on the possible benefits of awareness.
Another person got an unexpected bonus from the exercise:
I tried listening to the sounds around me in the kitchen, was impressed at the dishwasher making such a rhythmic nose, when I realized that there was a meeting at the hall down the road to mark a Senegalese festival and it was actual, real drum beats that I could hear. I watched them all reunited nostalgically, grouped together around their drums, keeping up a rhythm that lasted well into the night. I watched one man in a long white tunic walk away with such a joyful spring to his step that it made me laugh.
This is another example of how one can set out to expand one's universe a little by learning a new skill, and find little side-benefits from the exercises adding extra value to life—a conversation overheard, a discovery of an interesting spectacle down the street that one might never have witnessed in normal consciousness.
Although I specify a particular way of doing these exercises for the sake of clarity, they are in fact very adaptable to everyday life once you get the basic principle. It is a way of listening—rather than a way of listening just to music.
THIS TOTAL AWARENESS, AM I MEANT TO GO INTO A SORT OF TRANCE?
If by “trance” you mean a turning inward, or you mean a narrowing down of the attention for economy of effort—like the times when you are so focused on driving that you are not aware of anything other than the road—then what we are exploring would seem quite the opposite of trance. And yet what we are doing can shift consciousness in the same way that a trance does.
If, instead of opening up his hearing to everything around, the writer above had been a security guard specifically listening out for signs of crime, would he have been more, or less likely to hear that conversation? It is an interesting question.
But I suggest that for most of our evolutionary history we would have had our senses wide open for all impressions. When walking in the wild, danger can take so many forms—a lion's footprint or the trembling of a branch, the hiss of a snake or buzz of a mosquito, a smell of rhino shit or of fire, and so on. This was confirmed by one of the participants who had been taught a similar exercise as part of the Kamana Program of the Wilderness Awareness School, described as “a mix of native wisdom and field biology”. He mentioned an interesting extension of the awareness exercise that you could experiment with:
One of the things they taught was to imagine each sense being a different animal: Owl for sight, Deer for hearing, Raccoon for touch, Dog for smell, Fox or Cat for movement. One then pulled it all together and became the Wolf. For me this helps.
So I reckon that human beings, like most animals, evolved to be hard-wired for wide open senses, and that modern living has narrowed down the threats so that we have gained a greater ability to concentrate, but that we do not practise open awareness sufficiently. That could explain why it feels so good when you do practise it. As one participant wrote:
Things seemed more beautiful and more weird—hearing sounds without taking for granted where they were coming from made listening a much more interesting experience…It had the effect of making me feel liberated, I suppose from emotions and attachment. Everything seemed new, it was a bit like being on holiday or waking up first thing in the morning, before you remember all the stuff you've got to do.
Another wrote:
I did find that focusing on the environment as fully as possible took the focus away from all the stuff going on in my head, leading to a meditative state. Even if I did struggle with maintaining TA, at least I learnt a way of clearing my mind and reducing anxiety that can be used in daily situations.
IF I CAN'T MANAGE THE WALKING EXERCISE, IS THE SEATED ONE OKAY?
Exercise 4, the walking awareness exercise, makes