Practicing the Art of Consciousness
An art requires enormous practice to master. Martial arts, cooking, guitar, painting. Thousands of hours of bumbling, effortful work before you reach the point where great work flows from an effortless, intuitive state.
Consciousness can be practiced too. The first time you strum a perfect chord on a guitar, you get a felt sense of what mastery must be like - playing like that all the time. It inspires you to keep going. I want to give that same felt sense for consciousness itself, which for most of us is an abstract term.
Close your eyes. Imagine you’re fast asleep, lost in a dream. Now imagine the moment you realize you’re dreaming. If you’ve ever practiced lucid dreaming, you know this feeling. If you haven’t, imagine it. Pay attention to the exact instant you snap to awareness. Feel what changed. What it feels like in your body.
Or try this. You’re on the couch after a long day, watching TV, zoning out. Hours pass unnoticed. Then something causes you to snap to awareness. Suddenly you’re aware of the whole room - the couch, the TV, the clock. That instant of awareness. Notice what it feels like in your body.
That feeling is the direction of practice. Increased clarity and awareness of the fullness and richness of the moment.
There are many ways to practice. Meditation is the purest, but you can practice in all moments. When playing an instrument you become aware of subtle tones and overtones, the micro adjustments of hands or breath. When wine tasting you notice increasingly subtle complexities of bouquet and taste.
The generalization: increasing awareness of all the subtle experiences happening in the present moment. Practice when working, playing, fighting, fucking. Sober or intoxicated. Consciousness can be practiced in all moments. Even while sleeping.
Why practice the art of consciousness? Because it’s fundamentally who we are. Consciousness expressed in the form of human beings, living life. Why not live as fully as possible?