Group med Sunday. The doors of perception.
Observations from Ibiza.
I recently got back from my annual Art of Areté retreat in Ibiza.
The room has these panoramic glass doors that fold open, and some panels have traditional looking handles that are purely decorative and don’t actually work.
All week, we noticed people struggling with entering/exiting the room. They’d walk up, try the handle without success, and walk away without noticing that one of the panels on the left side was already propped open.
I found myself giggling at the similarity to life. As in the micro, so in the macro. Always.
So often, we find ourselves struggling with what we’re certain is the correct entrance or pathway for us, so hyper-focused on the metaphorical door handle that we don’t even notice the wide open door just a few feet away.
That’s because one psycho-physiological outcome of stress response is tunnel vision. In order to aid us in a fight-or-flight situation, the brain signals the eyes to narrow focus to what’s immediately in front of us, excluding anything on the periphery.
Focusing is helpful when we’re doing math or driving or cooking or battling wildebeests. But as a default mode of operating, it leads to the systematic exclusion of most other possibilities, many of which could be more relevant to us than what’s in front of us.
Better to keep a broad spectrum of awareness and be able to consider a wide variety of possibilities.
As meditators, our awareness begins to expand from a golf ball-sized awareness to more of a basketball-sized awareness, and we’re able to hold more things in it at any given time.
Bad for fighting bears. Great for finding open doors.
Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday May 10 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or click Subscribe on this page to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your preferred calendar.