Orienting to the Ordinary

Have you ever taken a drive, parked your car, and realized you have very little memory of the ride? You can picture it if it’s a familiar route, yet the details from that ride are absent. The ride happened, you arrived safely, but the experience itself seems murky or even non-existent. It’s as if life happened but was not registered in consciousness. It was not quite lived.

What about when you get to the destination? Are you suddenly more plugged in to the experience because you have “arrived”? Or is there still a kind of what’s next? momentum operating within you?

If we look closely, we often tumble forward through life, propelled by some force edging us away from the present moment. A combination of factor contribute to this momentum—pressures of society, work, parenting, learned patterns from childhood, the survival-based design of our nervous system as a response to danger, or our inner landscape of emotions and sensations that we’d prefer to avoid.

All these influences can encourage us to lean ahead, drifting into a world that is not here, a life that is not the one we are actually living. Along the way, we may evaluate ourselves—critiquing what should have been different or elevating ourselves because of what seems to be working. We may decide what another person’s behavior means in relation to us or replay a recent conversation, making tremendous meaning out of it. On some level, we are often painting a detailed illustration of who we are and how we are doing.

Our agenda about what’s next, what’s wrong, or what should be different pushes us along a trail of unconscious moments. And we believe that if we manage, fix, or solve all the current concerns, we will finally relax. Will we?

From the perspective of practice, none of this is wrong. We are not trying to “fix” a problem. Yet we do want to investigate the location and quality of our attention—one of the few things we can shift in any moment. And we want to investigate how that shift can impact our lives.

Investigation is a very important word. It is our job to want to know. Not to judge. To want to know. We begin by acknowledging that we usually do not know where we are.

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To be mindful is to recognize the rarity of authentically connecting to the sounds and sensations of the present moment—as ordinary and mundane as they are—and to make contact with them without expectation or demand, without interfering with them, without resisting them, without clinging to them, and without trying to increase or decrease them.

We “risk” putting down the heightened focus on what’s not here and turn toward our basic, moment-to-moment human experience. And if our conditioned, judgmental, preference-based mind is strong, we become mindful of that. We observe the felt sense of our wishes or resistances to things as they are.

We begin to wonder about the now and turn towards it as if we’ve never seen it before, which is true. We do not demonize our thoughts, stories, narratives, or thought patterns, but we recognize their existence and nature. We begin to notice if the mind is capable of more than thinking.

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Observe the tendency to “get through” things—the tumbling-forward energy that may arise in daily life. Become aware of this energy, this forward momentum. No need to judge it. No need to even stop it. It’s not a problem.

Recognize whether there is a preference between sitting down for a nourishing meal and beginning to tackle a sink full of dishes. Do not try to enjoy the dishes. Just recognize the preference. Awaken to and see it clearly in the spotlight of your awareness. Sense the experience of trying to be done with something or rushing or being on what may feel like automatic pilot.

Observe the experience and allow it completely. Become present for the lack of presence.

What happens next? What happens when, rather than trying to slow down or focus, you witness the rush or the scattered energy?

If you wish, you can also remember that you are conscious. Remember that, if you are not asleep, you are hearing, seeing, and experiencing physical sensation. You can remember these things and connect to them. Without expectation. What happens next? Don’t try to organize or calm your mind or your thoughts. Notice what happens in your mind if give importance to your senses.

There is what teacher A.H. Almaas calls our immediate experience—the nature of the present moment—which is often not recognized at the time it occurs. For example, right now, what is the temperature on the skin of your feet? Did you know the answer to that before reading the question despite the fact that there was warmth or coolness there?

To begin to know more about our immediate experience is our assignment. Additionally, we want not only to become aware of our immediate experience, but also to recognize that our immediate experience is not the same as any thoughts we may have about it.

Can you entertain a kind of care for the mundane? What if the mundane mattered? The stirring of the coffee. The getting into the car. The brushing of the teeth.