What made it special was that the ordinary sounds were being experienced in an extraordinary way - with deep equanimity. In other words, I was simply being with the sounds exactly as they were; Free from expectations - I didn’t need the sounds to be special, unusual, or in any way different than they were. Free from comparison - I wasn’t comparing them to sounds I’d heard in the past, or an idea of how I thought they should be. There was no good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse, ordinary or extraordinary. Free from ego - I didn’t make it about ‘me’ or an identity as ‘artist’ or ‘musician’. And free from control - I simply let the sounds come and go without resistance.
And it’s when life feels most overwhelming that reconnecting to this magic is most important. It’s not about bypassing suffering or “being positive”, it’s about practicing a way of seeing that expands our sense of self. The moments of magic—sun flares around a kitten, the sound of rain on summer leaves, the electricity of the autumn air—are reminders of the deeper rhythms going on beyond stress and struggle.
August 30, 2024 | By , cec | 5 minute read I can easily get lost in my mind. While that is sometimes amusing, it most often doesn’t take me where I want to go. Don’t get me wrong, the mind is a wonderful thing! It got us to the moon. It’s how we produce enough food to feed 8 billion people. But, as the saying goes, “the mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.”
That’s where the body comes in. Body is always in the present moment. When I’m aware of bodily sensations I have some space from my mind, some perspective on it. I don’t get tricked so easily. And from a clear mind comes an open heart.
Practice is a potent reminder of our relational nature. When we take the time to practice, we come to see how we relate to ourselves, others, our environments, our challenges and successes, our dreams, our fears. If enlightenment really is intimacy with all things, how can we cultivate healthy, intimate connections of all sorts in all parts of our lives?
We just finished version 2.0 of our CEC Community Practice Activation Kit available for free here. The idea of this kit is to inspire people around the world to start up their own community practice groups, in a way that’s unique to them and uniquely responsive to their local needs and context.
Suddenly, we exist. Existing is complicated. We turn to practice. As we love to say at the CEC, being human takes practice. But what is a practice? The simplest definition of practice is some action – mental, emotional, physical, social – that you choose and repeat, so that it can become a habit. It is the deliberate cultivation of habits. Contemplative practices are practices that rehearse how you want to exist and relate to yourself and others.
This primer is about the broadest possible classes of meditation and spiritual experience. It’s a work-in-progress. Every time I come back, I find myself cutting more details, for they seem like technique-specific effects, and not the human universals I once imagined. So it goes. In a couple years there may be nothing here at all.
Almost any domain or activity in life can be approached as an intentional practice, and the people who specialize in these domains have learned important things about being human. How can we draw this wisdom out? Introducing the Consciousness Explorers Club's new pluralistic practice paradigm :)
“A wise teacher, and a wise centre, needs to offer a whole range of skillful practices, because people come along at different stages of their inner development, with different temperaments, and with different sets of problems.” -Jack Kornfield
