Notice!

 Notice that you are noticing.

Michael Singer

Are You Noticing?

One of the themes I picked up on my week off was about the importance of "noticing" .  Most of us, I believe,  go around our busy worlds so busily doing and thinking we do not "notice" all that is happening around us and in us in this moment. We barely notice the beauty of the natural world around us, let only "experience" it.  We barely notice the people around us...what they are saying, what they are feeling, let alone "experience" it.  We barely notice what is going on in our bodies, if there is pain or tension, numbness or tingling, fatigue or energy, let alone "experience" it until it is too late. We barely notice our thoughts and feelings, let alone "experience" them  until we are in full fledge reactivity and they are all consuming pulling us away from our present moment awareness. We barely notice our now, let alone "experience" it , accept it, allow it, embrace it, use it as the wonderful healing opportunity it is. 

The Mind Is Not a Noticer

The mind is a busy doer, a protector of the psyche and the body and is more or less conditioned not to "notice", not to experience "what is" .  It wants to get things "done".  To make sure "you" as the little personality is safe.  It is like a big machete swiping and swinging through the external world your personality has determined as real...cutting down the uncomfortable and throwing it to the side, manipulating life so as to create a clear path for you to walk through.  It doesn't have time to "notice", to stop and smell the roses etc 

There are two things we have to remember here as we make our way through the jungle  we created and projected.  The first is that we, who we really are, is not the mind and the second: it is not the mind that does the noticing. Who we really are as Self, higher consciousness, "Deeper I", Atman, soul (whatever term you care to use) is that which notices. As Eckhart Tolle reminds us in, How to Enter a Different State of Consciousness, there is no thinking or doing  involved in noticing. Noticing is an aspect of higher consciousness.   Noticing is going home to who we really are beyond the mind. 

Consciousness needs to be reclaimed from the thinking process. Eckhart Tolle

The mind is not a noticer. It is a thinker, perceiver, a judger, a discriminator and a fixer but not much of an observer. The mind's job, the job we, as these little me identities, have given it is to make the outer world okay for our inner worlds which are not okay by grasping from the world that which the mind deems as pleasant, and pushing away (which usually means squishing down) that which is unpleasant while we fail to "notice" anything that is neutral. If  something pleasant comes up to the mind and says, "Helloooo. I am here."  The mind reaches out and grabs it , clinging to it , thinking that it found and preserved something that will make what is not okay inside us, okay.  If  something unpleasant and uncomfortable comes up into our conscious awareness either from the external world, or from all that collected stuff within that so wants to come out, with a "Helloooo, I'm here," the mind will do whatever it can to avert it...to push it away from conscious awareness so it does not disturb us farther. That usually means pushing it back down.  If something "neutral" comes up, something that is neither threatening or glittery enough for the mind to see it as helpful, then the mind will not even see it, or hear it, or feel it.  It will walk all over it in order to do its job. The moment and the "what is" or "suchness" of it, is often neutral and unnoticed by the mind. 

Notice

The goal than is to notice more.  To, in increments,  become more and more aware of our experience in each moment be it pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. These things we notice also include not only what the five senses pick up from the external world in each moment but more importantly what is going on inside us in response to that. It involves noticing our thoughts, our feelings and our body sensations. To notice how the mind reacts or responds to the different perceptions of experience...to notice our tendency to grasp and cling to the pleasant that arises, our tendency to push away  or stuff down the unpleasant or uncomfortable , and our tendency to ignore the neutral. What happens emotionally, mentally and physically when something we deem as "bad, wrong, or shouldn't be" happens? Are you tensing up, are you feeling frightened, are you automatically thinking, "Now what can I do to stop this or fix this?" That is, after all, the way most of us are conditioned to react.

Notice, Don't React

We do not need to "react".  We can respond.  As a nursing educator who happened to teach Interpersonal Communication for many years, I always taught my students about what I called the "three B's".  I would encourage them before interacting with patients or other members of the health care team, before performing their skills or most importantly before responding to conflict or crisis, to practice the 3 B's. First, take a mental or physical step back from the personality's view of the situation. Become the Observer, not the reactor. Then I tell them to take a deep breath (or three)...to become aware of that breath.  Not only will that breath reactivate the parasympathetic nervous system so they are more relaxed and calm which is always the best way to approach anything, it will activate the noticer...the observer within themselves, that higher level of consciousness and clarity.  Then I tell them to begin again from there...so it is not the frightened, reactive personality running the show but spacious and calm awareness. 

The First Step to Awakening

Michael Singer, in most everything he writes or teaches related to untethering the soul, suggests that noticing is the crucial first step toward awakening. As soon as we notice that reaction starting , the moment we begin to feel uncomfortable it is an opportune time to take a step back and ask, "How do you know you are uncomfortable?  That you are feeling physical pain, anger, depression or whatever? Who is thinking this?  Who is feeling this? Who is aware of "you"...this entity you created with your mind...feeling, thinking or reacting in anyway you might be? " As soon as we do that, as soon as we realize that something deeper in us is witnessing something else in us behave, think, feel...we are going home to the spacious awareness that we are. We are Noticer, Observer, or as Deepak Chopra puts it, the passenger looking through a perceptual window taking a perceptual snapshot.

From there we can farther examine our tendency to want to push the unpleasant back down and instead of doing that, instead of resisting it and adding more junk to our over stuffed internal pandora's boxes, we allow it to release or pass through us. By taking this proverbial step back we relax with the perceived "unpleasantness" of  what is instead of tensing up against it as we are so conditioned to do.

Mindfulness and Noticing In Everyday Life

This is a very profound and healing use of "mindfulness" but we do not need to begin there.  We can begin by stopping so many times an hour just to notice our surroundings, all that we are picking up with our five senses, close our eyes and notice what is going on in our external  bodies, and our inner ones...Are there thoughts?  Don't follow the thoughts...just "notice" them. Are there feelings? Are they pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? What does your mind want to do in response to  those feelings? How is your body responding to those feelings? Your thoughts? Just notice. Then ask, "Who is noticing?"

One very neutral thing we can notice in our experience to help us to build this skill, is breath.  Just notice that which we barely ever notice...that which the mind judges as neutral yet it something so essential to our experience, our existence. If we practice daily to notice and observe our breaths for a certain amount of time...we can build the skill of noticing and we can tap into that spaciousness of who we are .

Anyway, that is a lot of rambling, eh?  Just want us all to  begin to notice what is really important. 

All is well. 

Deepak Chopra/ The Chopra Well ( July, 2022) You are the strange unknowable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agAb__58Y3E

Michael Singer/ Mayim Bailikis Breakdown  ( ) Let Go of Yourself and Surrender to Life. Bialik Breakdown

Eckhart Tolle ( ) How to Enter a Different Sate of Consciousness.Eckhart tolle & how to enter a different state of consciousness - Google Search