Have you ever caught yourself wondering how you got where you are right now? Have you ever had the thought that you don’t really know yourself? Has it ever occurred to you that the body underneath all of your thoughts is something different and impossible to contain in words and thoughts?
The exercise I will do with you today will help bring you to a deeper experience of you as a physiological experience, instead of all the thoughts and labels you think you might be.
Whatever you call yourself–human, socialist, leftist, liberal, conservative, Buddhist, Christian, [your name here], fat, thin, ugly, pretty, and anything else you can think of–is not the same as Y-O-U. Why does any of this matter? Perhaps it doesn’t matter at all. Perhaps living a life in which the real creature gets buried under confused thoughts, and confuses itself for those thoughts, is not too bad after all.
It takes so much effort and time to pay attention, to develop focused, concentrated awareness, and to really get clear with oneself about what the hell is going on in any given situation…Why not just float with the habits and programs that have gotten each of us this far?
Well, for one thing, that is not the mission of Creative Deconstruction or Escape Plans Unlimited. The mission of this blog is to wake myself up; to seek my own enlightenment, my own joy, and my own concentrated and focused attention; and to ignore anything and everything that tries to convince me otherwise. Of course, this can get a bit complicated when attempting to identify foreign installations, as Castaneda called our programming and waking sleep, and to remove them.
Again, I redirect your mind to the body in which it resides. Feel that thing sitting there in front of this screen.
For the sake of the following exercise, record a video of yourself doing it, or feel free to follow along with me and to stare into my eyes during the video. Do not expect to be entertained by this video. Instead, expect to have an experience….your own experience. Notice if the full 2 minutes of the 2 exercises seems to drag on, notice your breathing and your reactions. Leave me a comment about such observations.
Without further enjoyable rambling, the video:
I agree, the two minutes spent here hardly seem to be any time at all. It is interesting to note the variations, as Garret suggested. You can hear him getting into the breathing a bit at the beginning, and I saw some interesting quick/slow patterns of blinking in the second minute. Paying attention to those things distracted me from my own breathing/blinking for a moment, but generally this seems to be a relatively easy exercise to do regularly, and for that I thank you, Garret. I too just found this blog recently and plan to look through the rest of it as time permits.
hi, i just found this today
definitely did not feel like two minutes – it felt like perhaps a few seconds went by!
i could feel myself outside of time and space….and felt aware of us both in that same space together…..
this is an exercise i used to practice at work….every once in a while if i didn't have anything else to do i would sneak off to the bathroom and stare into my reflection until everything turned surreal, like being in a dream….then i would try to hold on to that feeling for as long as possible
This exercise is useful. There seems to be a lot of tension around the eyes. I go to a Tibetan healer who uses techniques that give similar results that the Radical Undoing exercises do. He once generated a ton of Chi in his hands and put them [in front] of my eyes. His hands were almost hot like an iron. Insanity! Afterwards my eyes became bright and shiny. They opened more and I looked awake, attentive, and aware. Fascinating.
I’ve been practicing the exercise where you look in the mirror and try to express a large variety of emotions with only your eyes, careful not to move the rest of the face. For some reason I find this exercise extremely difficult. Even more difficult is to try and look at my face objectively like it belongs to another person. When I was a young boy I would sometimes look in the mirror and think for a split-second, “Who is that anyways?” As I got older I rarely have that feeling naturally without forcing it.
Anyways, thanks for the work Garrett. After Christmas I’ll get a hold of you. I want to schedule a few sessions and an Escape Plan or two!
Hey there Otte-
Thanks for the excellent comment. I enjoy hearing about your experiences with the Tibetan healer. There is much in the way of alternative healing experiences that goes virtually unnoticed in the established media, and even among most people I know. I also practice the exercise of expressing various emotions through the eyes from time to time. I have not done it for awhile now, but I will do the routine today. Your comment inspired me to do so. Thanks!
I look very forward to working with you. How exciting to assist in your escape plans (one must always have an escape plan!) and to do a few sessions.
Enjoy!
PS: thanks for the link on your website!
Great work, here!
Persevere Bro!
Aloha!
j
Thanks much, friend.