Read until the end to do find the exercise
I hope that you're open to trying this excercise. Share your experience in the comments below. I am really curious!
We’re in a conference room in Korea. Stale light and dry air seem to provide fertile soil for revolution. I usually associate smoky back rooms, quirky poets, and the underground art scene with the kind of progress I like to see. What a paradox, I think to myself, as I catch myself thinking in concepts while trying to free our world from the latter. Concepts of good and bad, black and white, fat and skinny, smart and dumb. Boxes that people are forced into.
Dry and damp.
No air.
Souls are slowly losing color.
The rainbow looks sad.
The universe can’t live in a box, just like a bird can’t live in a cage.
Unable to unfold, deprived of its magic, that’s the reality of a caged universe.
I am traveling with a Chinese professor, who’s on a mission to wake up the world. I take mental notes, while he is holding one of his passionate speeches about the higher forces at work. His gaze is sharp like razors, his articulation wild but controlled, and his presence is captivating. Pulling strings, moving our attention to where he wants it to be. Hypnosis.
Riddles. Revelations. Socrates reborn?
Waking up the world. What does that mean? The theory is that there are two states we can live from, presence and thought. Fear, anxiety, and anger live in thought, while joy and happiness live in the present. As you are reading this, you’re alive. Isn’t that the biggest joy of them all? To be granted another day, another moment, another now? Right here and right now, there is no worry, no past, no future, no childhood trauma. Right here and right now there is only you, your breath, and the text that I have written for you to read.
Every moment dies with the dawn of the next. Perfect impermanence. A linear time concept doesn’t work in a world that gyrates around change.
According to this Chinese professor, we can learn how to connect to our innate joy of being by grounding ourselves in presence and practicing stillness. The stories we’ve created for ourselves, “I don’t trust because of the way I grew up”, “I am angry because of the way my ex treated me”, “I feel this way because…”, are our biggest obstacles, he says. If we forgive and trust what the universe brings us, the wild currents of life will take us exactly where we need to be.
A powerful approach that brings up a lot of questions for first time listeners. Our Korean friends are interested but skeptical. Their world is numbers and data, straight forward science, feelings that are bottled up and stored on their external hard drive. Our professor only needs ten minutes with the founder of one of Seoul’s most revolutionary co-living spaces to make this grown man cry. Flowers, trauma, pain are finally leaving his body and cumulating in a puddle next to his feet. The skepticism is diminishing but the questions are still there.
What about someone who’s ill? What about children that are starving? What about the poor? While escaping thought and grounding yourself in presence is a privileged problem to have, I realize that it is the privileged person who is trapped in thought the most. I’ve traveled through third world countries, where I met people who possessed so little but had so much to give. A smile, a moment of togetherness, a place to sleep, a meaningful conversation, or just the directions to a hidden place in the jungle that I wasn’t able to find. It is us, living in bustling cities like New York city, who exchanged time for money, the moment for the future, and the pureness of the now for a dirty doormat with the slogan “Carpe Diem”.
Living in presence. What does that mean in our westernized society? When was the last time, you gifted a genuine smile to a stranger? When was the last time, you gave more than you had without feeling used? And when was the last time, you looked up from your phone to connect with someone on the train?
We rush from one appointment to the next. More often than not, we are to busy to stop for a moment and enjoy the stories of the wind, the love of the sun, and the life that lives in a raindrop. We’re too tired to keep up with this invisible monster called time, chasing the future that is not yet there, and dwelling on the past, which is already gone.
**I dare you now! Put your phone or computer away and participate in a little exercise with the closest person around. If there is no one around, you can use the mirror. Look this person in the eyes. Strong gaze, calm and natural breath. Don’t talk for one minute, and try to focus on everything you hear around you. Your own breath, the wind, the cars on the street, the people next to you on the train, whatever noises your personal soundtrack consists of. Now, try to see everything you can see around you while keeping eye contact. Again: people, plants, streets, your room, the kitchen, whatever 3D world you’re living in right now. **
After one minute, let your brain roam free and explore how you feel, what you have learned, and what you heard, felt, and saw in the other person’s eyes.
That’s what an unboxed universe looks like.
Deep, full of sensation, dense colors, connectivity. Stillness.
Carpe Diem, and I’ll meet you in the next now.