Don’t Forget to Look Up: A Lesson in Mindful Awareness

If you’re local to Utah, you know about Zion National Park and a famous hike called the Narrows. It's a gorgeous slot canyon that people travel from all over the world to see.

I once got a permit with a friend of mine from Norway to hike this slot canyon. I'd heard about the dangers of flash flooding, and I went into the ranger’s station feeling nervous. I had all these questions running in my mind — Did I have the gear I needed? What if it rains? Do I need a helmet? — as I asked the ranger, "Do you have any final advice for me?”

I think the ranger could sense my nervousness, but she just smiled at me and said, "Yeah. Don't forget to look up."

I thought this was funny advice. It might have been the very last thing on my mind to actually remember to pay attention to the beautiful scenery for this hike that I had gone to great lengths to do and that people come from all over the world to do.

But sure enough the next morning when I got into the river with my friend, I noticed that the path was really uneven and the further down the canyon we got, the quicker the current got, the deeper the water in some points, and it was hard to keep my footing. At a lot of different points along the ten-hour hike I noticed myself staring down at my feet. And I remembered this ranger’s advice. Don't forget to look up.

It's occurred to me since then that this is very good advice for living a mindful life as well.

In a similar way as hiking the Narrows in Zion, there are different things going on in life moment to moment that can trip us up. Things that can absorb our attention and cause our attention to collapse. This is one of the great challenges in human life. We tend to collapse around a challenging event, and we lose the perspective of the whole, the entirety of what's going on around us.

Another simple example of this is when you stub your toe. All is peachy and dandy, and then your attention absolutely collapses into the throbbing pain in your toe. It’s like there's nothing else happening in the world but this throbbing pain. Suddenly, anything you're aware of in previous moments is collapsed in to the problem.

At this point, I want to say that it's wonderful that we're actually wired to pay attention to problems, right? if we didn't, we wouldn't survive life in the city. We wouldn't pay any attention to the horn of a bus that's blaring and it would flatten us as we blithely walk out in to the street. So it's very functional and adaptive that our attention is wired to pay attention to problems.

The downside is that we can spend our whole lives attending to problems.

Moment to moment we can get caught in this state of collapse that's ongoing. And that's what I noticed vividly on my hike in Zion. If I didn't remember to slow down and take a breath — get my footing and look up — I would've missed the spectacular scenery that was the whole point of being there.

Similarly, as we practice mindfulness we can remember to slow down, take a breath, soften, and look up, so to speak. It doesn't mean that the ground isn't still uneven. It doesn't mean that there aren't still obstacles and challenges in our environment.

What it means is that when we're aware of ourselves looking down or in or collapsing in to the problem that comes up moment to moment, we can remember that ranger’s advice.

Look up. Relax. Let awareness start to sprawl. As we do that, the challenges of the moment are still here, but they're held in the context of the whole: all of life. The experience of the experience of the totality of this moment which if you allow your awareness to relax in to it, you'll find is inherently rewarding to pay attention to.

We are going to practice noticing the way that awareness collapses into a problem and we're going to notice the natural ability of awareness to open back up. To take in and more fully appreciate the whole. So I invite you to find a comfortable place to sit down and to settle in.

***

Start by bringing awareness to the physical body, feeling sensation flowing through you.

Notice the rise and fall of the breath — and the sensation of breathing. Notice that on each out-breath the body just naturally softens and lets go, making way for the next breath.

Now, I want you to bring attention to the most challenging aspect of your experience in this moment. It might be discomfort in the body, it might be emotional discomfort, or it might be a thought in the mind about a condition in life that's challenging that you. Just allow your attention to be absorbed in whatever it is in this moment.

If your attention is drawn to a sensation in the body or an emotion, you can just observe it very closely, noticing its texture, quality, and shape. If it's a condition in your life that you find your mind returning to again and again, you can notice what impact that thought has on the body, what emotion it brings up and what response, fully allowing it to be present. Not pushing on it or struggling with it, but rather enveloping it in awareness in this moment.

And you can let the contracted muscle of awareness start to relax a little bit, start to let go. Feel the spaciousness of awareness even as the challenge may persist.

Notice the physical body in this moment. And you can be aware of emotional activity coming up in awareness in this moment. Letting it rise, linger, and pass — letting awareness fully envelop and surround and permeate all emotional activity.

And you can be aware of thoughts coming up in the moment, thoughts rising in awareness. You don't have to latch on to them or dive in to them or think about them any further. You can just notice thoughts rising in awareness. Awareness, like the wide open sky — letting it all be present.

Notice that the world itself is also rising in your awareness. Feel the vastness, openness, spaciousness of awareness itself and the way that experience naturally arises in the space of this awareness. There's room for it all and room for more.

Staying in contact with this spaciousness, you can notice again the challenge we started with. And notice that this challenge — this stone in a river — is just one element in an infinitely beautiful landscape full of other stones. The river flowing, trees hanging off the canyon walls, the scenery towering over us, all about us.

This moment and every moment is an invitation to look up, look in, to experience the fullness of this moment. We're reminded to open back up in to this spaciousness of awareness that is always already the case.

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Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity: Three Mindful Skills

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast

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Why do we hear so much about the breath when we talk about mindfulness?

There's a good reason for it. The breath is with us all the time. In this moment wherever you are and whatever you're doing, you're doing it in a body, and that body is breathing. Because of this, virtually all meditative traditions make use of the breath. It's a ready-made object of meditation.

Focusing on the breath is also an intuitive way for us to contact our awareness. The breath moves slowly enough that most people are able to track it immediately, without years of practice. When we pay attention to the breath, we open up different opportunities in awareness. It can be a really powerful tool in developing mindfulness.

In addition, breathing makes it easier for us to develop basic meditative skills.

My experience is that virtually every teacher talks about these skills in one way or another, and you see them in the ancient texts as well. But I've never come across a clearer framing of it than a framing from Shinzen Young — an American born teacher who has really influenced my practice. I feel a lot of gratitude for him.

Young talks about mindfulness as a skill set. He says any time we practice mindfulness we're practicing concentration, clarity, and equanimity.

Concentration is just what it sounds like. Most people intuitively understand that concentration means focusing on one thing while letting other things be in the background, out of focus. There are more details to cover, but for the time being we can leave it at that.

Clarity helps us notice what’s happening moment to moment. This is really important because when we're able to get clear on what's happening moment to moment, we become free from it. Rather than being totally buried and lost in an experience, we take a step back and witness it. We're able to see it clearly from a slight distance, and this allows us to come back in to experience with a certain level of spaciousness and freedom. Clarity improves our objective behavior in life.

Equanimity is about acceptance. It’s our ability to just accept what's happening moment to moment — to not interfere with the flow of experience. Often, the moment I introduce this concept, hands shoot up in the room and people say: "Woah, what if it's appropriate to interfere? What if something's going on that I don't want to see happen? What if there's injustice, violence, and my job is to act?" Those are great questions. The point here is that when we're deeply accepting, when we cultivate this quality of equanimity and awareness, it doesn't mean we're not still passionately engaged in the world. What it means is that we're not in denial of what's happening. We're open, present, and receptive. We allowing the fullness of experience moment to moment to inform us. Fully informed, we're able to act more appropriately and skillfully in life.

Now, let’s take a moment to practice these skills, using the breath as the foundation of our practice.

Wherever you are, I encourage you to find a little perch or somewhere where you can settle in. Allow yourself to come in to a posture where you can relax and also be alert.

For a moment you can just allow your awareness to fill the entire physical body. Like water soaking into a sponge, you can allow your awareness to totally soak through the physical body.

You can bring awareness to the torso: notice the expansion and contraction of the torso as you breath in and breathe out.

I'd invite you at this point to breathe in a little more fully than you usually do on the in-breath, filling your lungs with oxygen and feeling the stretch through the torso as you breathe in more fully. And likewise on the out-breath you can breathe out a little more fully than you normally would. Pushing the air out and feeling the collapse. The emptying of the lungs and torso. Feeling this contraction. Letting that go, you can come back to normal breathing.

Just letting the breath move through you naturally, not trying to control it in any way. Notice at this point the top of the in-breath. Breathing in as if you were a photographer on an expedition trying to take a photograph of a rare species. I want you to pay special attention to the top of the in-breath. See if you can notice the point at which the in-breath becomes the out-breath. The exotic creature rears its head, the out-breath.

You can do the same at the bottom of the out-breath: see if you can notice the very moment at which the in-breath appears. As if you were trying to capture a photograph of that very moment that the in-breath appears.

Notice that however closely you look, you'll never find an actual line or moment when the in-breath becomes the out-breath. In-breath and out-breath are just words and ideas. When we plunge into the actual territory, we experience that the in-breath and the out-breath are seamlessly intertwined.

So you can let go of in-breath and out-breath and let go in to simply breathing. Neither in-breath or out-breath; just the organic whole. The unbroken flow of breathing.

As you stay with breathing, you can allow the out-breath particularly to soften you even more. With each out-breath you feel the body let go even more, riding the breath like a wave into deeper and deeper relaxation.

As you soften in the body you'll notice a natural quality of acceptance arise, an ability to just allow the body to be as it is. Allow this entire moment to be as it is. The body might not be perfectly comfortable, and that's perfectly okay. There's a part of you that can just allow it to be exactly as it is.

Thoughts continue to flow through the mind, and there's no need to do anything about them. You can allow thought to flow through the mind as naturally as blood flows through the veins. Whatever's happening in the body and mind and the world around you, you can allow it. You can hold it with this quality of acceptance, with equanimity.

You can stay in contact with these flavors of awareness, having a natural settledness of focus and concentration in life. You can allow things to be as they are and deeply enjoy the flow of life that we're always immersed in as long as we're breathing.

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Transcribed by Seth McConkie, edited by Jon Ogden

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