Arc 3 · Liberated Form · Lesson 12

Moving Awareness

A practice that makes appreciation more available. The whole instruction is one sentence: discover appreciation in whatever arises in your senses.

What this practice is

Appreciation can arise spontaneously when you notice the possibility of it. It can also be cultivated. Moving Awareness is the practice for the second case. The instruction is small enough to hold in one hand:

Discover appreciation in whatever arises in your senses.

The Opening Awareness practice from Arc 2 sets the ground for it. Before you can appreciate sensations for what they are, you have to be able to relax the habitual ways you usually meet them. The name Moving Awareness comes from what happens once those habits soften: sensations stop being immediately filed away as already-known patterns, and start being experienced as something always-fresh, continually moving and changing.

Many people find Moving Awareness difficult at first. To make it more approachable, the rest of this lesson walks through six short scaffolding exercises — two minutes each — that build toward the real thing. The scaffolds aren't the practice itself, but they help you become acquainted with what the practice asks for.

The six scaffolds

Press Begin guided sequence. A calm video will loop in the background while a guide reads each scaffold aloud, then leaves silence for two minutes. A bell rings between each one. Six scaffolds, twelve minutes of practice plus a little space.

First scaffold. Relax into the flow of your thoughts as they arise, change, and dissipate, moving like clouds in the sky, exhibiting a variety of weather. Let's begin. Second scaffold. Sit still with eyes fully open. Discover what is interesting to you in your sensory environment, moment by moment. There's no need to verbally note what you're interested in — just notice the focal point and movement of your interest. Let interests sustain as long as they naturally do. Don't prolong them. Don't cut them off. Let's begin. Third scaffold. As sensations and forms and stuff move, change, appear, or leave, discover your curiosity about them. What does curiosity feel like? Is it constant, or does it ebb and flow? Let's begin. Fourth scaffold. As sensations and forms and stuff show up in your awareness, allow them to take over your awareness completely. Momentarily, let them be your whole world — until your awareness moves on to something else. Then let that new experience take over completely. Let's begin. Fifth scaffold. See how much you can relax any intention to immerse yourself in sensations, or any intention to control the flow of them. Allow the flow of experience to be unmanaged. What would it be like to let yourself be tossed around in the waves and currents of experience? Let's begin. Sixth and final scaffold. Intentionally relax any effort you're making to do this well, or to completely understand what you're doing, or to strategize and plan. Allow yourself to merely discover what happens. Let's begin.

Putting it all together — five minutes

Now combine all six. Press play to hear the combined narration. When the narration ends, the timer continues silently for the rest of the five minutes. Relax, invite appreciation in, and let the whole thing run together.

For five minutes, relax and invite appreciation in. Relax into the flow of your thoughts as they arise, change, and dissipate, moving like clouds in the sky. Sit still with eyes fully open. Discover what is interesting to you in your sensory environment, moment by moment. Just notice the focal point and movement of your interest. Let interests sustain as long as they naturally do. As sensations and forms and stuff move, change, appear, or leave, discover your curiosity about them. What does curiosity feel like? Is it constant, or does it ebb and flow? See how much you can relax any intention to immerse yourself in sensations or to control the flow of them. Allow yourself to be tossed around in the waves and currents of experience. Intentionally relax any effort you're making to do this well, or to completely understand what you're doing. Allow yourself to merely discover what happens.

Moving Awareness — four minutes

Now let all those instructions fall away. The instruction for this round is the one-sentence version, and that's all you need to hold:

Discover appreciation in whatever arises in your senses.

Four minutes. Begin when you're ready.

Vividness in everyday life

A life that's full of appreciation is great. At the same time, appreciation can't be forced or prescribed. Across the previous arcs we built up Opening Awareness, which helps relax habitual unseeing. In this arc we've looked at appreciation from several angles, and taken the first steps into Moving Awareness — the meditation that makes it easier to appreciate whatever arises out of openness.

The full version of Moving Awareness is usually quite difficult until your Opening Awareness practice has had time to deepen and bear fruit. That doesn't mean the version you've practiced today can't be fun and interesting to play with on its own.

Appreciation can also surface in the most unexpected situations — the ones nothing in your training prepared you to find anything in. The discipline isn't to manufacture it. The discipline is to be available for it, and to notice when it shows up.

Closing this arc

The original course closes Arc 3 with a short film — a small reminder that vividness can show up in the most unexpected places.

Where this is going

Next is Arc 4 — the last arc — and the topic is energy. We'll look at how spaciousness liberates energy, how appreciation invites that newly freed energy to enrich a life, and we'll practice finding power in it.

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