An Every Day Exercise for Presence - Hyper-awareness

Some of my thoughts are evolving not only as a I write about them, but as my current reality ebbs and flows through the good and bad of life. When I’m either present in what I’m doing or zoomed out and observing my life, everything clicks and/or makes sense. It’s only when I’m stuck in the middle - from being unsure of myself or my next actions to succumbing to the vagaries of ego - that I start to suffer in the present. Things like pushing through my to-do list cause ‘there’s too much going on;’ rushing to get something over with cause I’d rather be somewhere else; watching TV just cause I feel like I’m too tired or overwhelmed. All these things rob the present of our engagement.

There are things that cause space for presence - suffering & meditation are two I’ve mentioned - and our engagement creates the presence. Another tool I use to activate my engagement, what creates the right neuropathway firings, is called hyper-awareness.

I believe calling on suffering brings our focus to the present because our brains are still wired for tribal life and the cause of the suffering could be a tiger. Most of our brain doesn’t recognize different sufferings, it just wants to pay close attention so we can get away from it and avoid the cause in the future. So it gives more energy to our senses and our experiences get flagged as more important, key tenets of presence. So by just calling on the feeling we’re engaging those neural pathways without reliving the past. I’d almost call it a mental trick, but there are no tricks in presence! Presence meditation is more straightforward - sit there and push thoughts away to remain present. Your brain is turning off the noise to create the space. Your brain can do internal/subconscious work during meditation, which is important, but it’s less present in life. You’re stuck there pushing thoughts away.

Knowing that turning off the noise and turning on my senses was an important step for presence I looked for other pathways that don’t involve such time or emotion. On the Waking Up app I stumbled across something called hyper-awareness practice. To me, hyper-awareness practice is the most….externally-engaged…tool for achieving presence. It kinda is presence, or the doorway, I dunno. It’s the simple practice of consciously increasing our attention to our senses but, like, big time. This can be done anywhere, I suggest outside or in nature, but anywhere is fine. Here’s how I get into the state -

Sit comfortably where you won’t be interrupted and take a deep breath. As you do start thinking about what your actual senses are perceiving. I usually start with my vision since more of our brain is usually dedicated to it than the other senses. Without moving my eyes I try to identify absolutely everything in my visual field, take it all in, at once.

When people are in presence they can perceive and remember more of what’s going on around them. Holding a state of hyper-awareness kinda backs into this and is, in essence, presence. You remember more from flow states or moments of danger or truly novel moments because your brain is taking in more than it’s predicting - the flow of information shifts to let more of it into your brain.

As I said, I’ll try to let the whole field, like zooming out on a map and looking at the whole thing, start imprinting on my brain. While I’m doing that I start layering in the other senses - ‘what am I smelling right now while I’m seeing the whole of what’s in front of me?’ In nature the breeze smells so good. ‘Now, while I’m seeing the whole of what’s in front of me and also sensing the smells around me, what am I tasting?’ It’s usually coffee cause I do this most in the morning. ‘Now, with those three things all here at once, what am I hearing?’ I like to start with the louder sounds and move down to the softest ones I can perceive. There’s so much to hear in nature, but during my typical session there are so many buzzing sounds.

Usually anytime I focus in on one thing, I lose the others. This may be where meditation comes in for me. I just let it be ok that I lost perception of my other senses and I try to bring them back in, together. Often it really feels like I’m just switching between senses and the feeling of them being let into the brain together isn’t a discrete sensation. It doesn’t feel like a goal to reach, it’s just a practice, like all the other things.

Lastly, while trying to hold vision, smell, taste, hearing, all at once I let what I’m feeling join the party. I start with mostly what I’m feeling around me. I sense my weight against whatever I’m sitting on, the connection of my hand to my chair or lap, my toes - what are they sensing? Then kind of bring it into the fold and try to sense all the things at once. If I’m struggling I’ll pick a few things, like I mentioned a few - what my toes sense, the taste of the coffee, the smell of the breeze, one of the faint buzzes, things in visual field like a tree, and cycle quickly between them trying to remove the transition. Toes, coffee, breeze, buzz tree, toes coffee breeze buzz tree, toescoffeebreezebuzztree. Finally removing the labels and just letting them all be, together, continuously flowing to my brain.

ChatGPT’s best interpretation of hyper-awareness…kinda creepy but also kinda works

This practice helps me find presence faster and more often without having to visit a monastery. When I’ve done it very well I feel like I caught some kind of high. Some neurochemistry was at work making me feel really good. When I do in the morning I feel like I’m ready to really tackle the day. And I take note of that feeling. I hope someday I can skip the practice and call on the feeling to get me there even faster.

One interesting lesson after having practiced this for a couple of years now - if I follow the same pattern, focus on the same things, practice to practice, I fall into a rut and hyper-awareness is reduced. Our brains are CONSTANTLY looking for patterns and shortcuts so it takes work to keep it engaged.

And I like to throw the hyphen into the word cause to me it bring more attention to ‘awareness’ than the correct spelling.

**No AI writing ever, these words are my own**