feel fully alive?
I don’t know what makes you feel alive, but you do.
I posed these questions to my Facebook friends when asking for help with this chapter. I received dozens of answers, wonderful slices of the everyday human experience. Here are a few responses:
Walking to take in the sun and nature’s beauty
When I just have to sing
Hiking with my dog
Telling the truth
Knowing my kids are happy
Connecting with people of other cultures and religions
Pushing the final minutes of my run
Sunrises
Giving a compliment to someone I don’t know
Feeling the wind
Hearing children’s laughter
Feeling in love
Giggling…crying…touching
Laughing until I cry from laughing so hard
As I read through these comments, the words “ordinary” and “available” came to mind. These were everyday experiences. It was remarkable how many comments included water, beaches, nature, and children. None, and I mean not one, of these comments included having more stuff, more money, or six-pack abs. Best of all, these moments of being fully alive were all free of charge and commonly available to most of us every day.
Gut Checks
Welcome to your first Gut Check. Gut Checks are inquiries to help you notice what you’re doing and how you’re living. Found throughout this book, they help you investigate and identify where you’re open and available and where you’re still stuck in your stories and beliefs. When you come upon a Gut Check, please just do it. The only way you’ll truly benefit from what I’m sharing is to roll up your sleeves and get curious about your experience right now.
Please take a moment, just one moment, and jot down three ways you feel fully alive. Refer to the examples on the previous page for hints. Use the lines below or write them in your journal:
1. _______________________________________
2. _______________________________________
3. _______________________________________
Try this every day for a month. Before closing your eyes at night, recall three moments or three ways you felt fully alive that day. Then list them in a journal or notebook. You don’t need to explain why they made you feel alive; just list them. You’ll soon learn to recognize moments of aliveness all the time.
Remember that feeling fully alive doesn’t always mean feeling good or blissed-out. High-definition, high-voltage living is not always peaceful. Glimpses are snapshots of reality, your life exactly as it is in the moment — unfiltered. The more you get to know what makes you feel fully alive, the more often you’ll experience high-definition, high-voltage living. This is precisely when you glimpse the space beyond your busy mind. This is where you meet your natural state.
Your Natural State
Your natural state is ordinary and always available to you. It’s a state in which you’re present, simply living in the moment. You experience this very normal and natural way of being when you show up in this moment, aware of your senses and surroundings. You don’t need to improve anything to meet this state. You access it when you shift your attention from busy mind to the space that lies just beyond thinking. In a matter of a few breaths, you have the capacity to shift from distracted to present, from frazzled to focused, and from confused to crystal clear. When you show up in this moment, you meet your most authentic way of being you. This is your natural state.
When you show up in this moment, you meet your most authentic way of being you. This is your natural state.
Sky gazing is a way to shift beyond your busy mind and settle into a space where you can glimpse your natural state. This relaxing practice allows you to feel what it’s like to experience high-definition, high-voltage living. Do this practice when you can look out a window or, better yet, sit outside. It can be done day or night. Join me for a guided Sky Gazing practice on the Verge Mobile App.
1. Settle into your seat or lie down. Set your timer for at least five minutes.
2. Close your eyes and take three deep breaths.
3. Now, bring your attention to your exhalation. Don’t strain to focus; just rest your attention on your exhalations.
4. Open your eyes and look at the sky. Rest your gaze softly on the wide open sky, not focused on any particular object.
5. With each exhalation, allow thoughts, distractions, and emotional tensions to gently release out of you into the vast sky. If a thought comes up, simply focus your attention on your next exhalation and allow the thought to pass. Repeat as often as necessary.
6. Allow yourself to be absorbed in looking at the sky, resting in the space inside of you, around you, and above you.
7. Notice your experience.
8. Continue until your timer goes off or, better yet, stay for as long as you like.
Glimpsing Your Natural State Is Being Fully Alive
Being fully alive is who you are beyond your stories, roles, and beliefs. Call it energy or awareness. In the context of this book, the words you adopt aren’t important, as being alive is ultimately indefinable and ever changing.
Don’t let the terminology confuse you. Ultimately, being fully alive goes beyond definitions — it must be directly experienced. What I’m here to point out to you is how your busy mind operates, so that you can recognize moments when you’re not living from your busy mind, moments when you’re living from your natural state. And it’s there, in the space beyond thoughts, doubt, and fear, where you feel fully alive.
I’ve had thousands of my own such glimpses of being fully alive not only standing on my yoga mat or on a mountaintop, but also with my family, in my car, and even while writing this book. You’ve had them too; you simply haven’t been paying attention to them — yet.
Being fully alive goes beyond definitions — it must be directly experienced.
Being fully alive isn’t a feeling that just happens when you’re at the beach or even in the middle of a crisis. It’s a direct experience of high-definition, high-voltage living. It recharges you in ways that you can now only imagine. Some days you may feel it faintly, and other days it will light you up. Don’t try to do anything special. You are already fully alive. You are already on the verge. Just take a breath, keep reading, relax, and enjoy.
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