Day Thirty-Five: Alive, Waking While Talking

Sensing ourselves, arms and legs, even when talking. This is amazing, and can be done.

We are programmed over and over and over to put our attention “out there” when we are talking. And that attention has a huge amount to do with spending a lot of time “up here” in our heads, preparing our next batch of words.

Usually we are preparing our next batch of words while the other person is still talking.

We listen to but the first sentence, or maybe even less, of what another person says before we go “up here” into our heads, to find the right tape loop, the right prerecorded offering that we will send out as our next bit of talking.

So we only partially listen, and then go up into our heads for a batch of words for “our turn.” And these words are very often words we have said over and over and over.

True thinking requires that we become quiet inside, and at least search for a new way of seeing and communicating what we want to say. What we really want to say, not just spout out something.


So this is the game today:

One, when another person is speaking, be quiet inside and sense our arms and legs and spine and follow our breathing and listen to their words, and listen to their hearts and listen for their souls.

Two, when it’s our turn, slow down, say less, search for something real to say, something that isn’t some stored away tape loop we’ve said so many times.

Three, while talking and listening, to be sensing our feet and our relationship to gravity and sensing arms and legs and spine, and our physical shape in each moment. Walking is grea for this, because at each moment one of our feet is pressing into the Earth, and at each moment our shape is changing.

Can we be aware of that?

Aware when talking, aware when walking: a sweet day.