The Magic of Noticing
There is a magic in noticing.
Mostly, in noticing simply where we are in terms of: are we caught up in our thinking or are we present with ourselves. There is a feeling to both and once you get familiar with yourself, it is quite a distinct difference.
The feeling of yourself is a calm knowing, a peace, a joy of being alive for no reason, or even a neutral type beingness feeling. The feeling of your thinking has a tension to it. Positive or negative flavoured thinking both have tension in the feeling. Excitement is a positive feeling with tension. Anxiety or fear is a negative feeling with tension. This tension feeling is an indicator that we've moved away from ourselves. It's that simple.
The moment we notice where we are on this feeling scale, we have quite literally come back to ourselves. Without noticing you would stay caught up in your thinking and never be the wiser.
In that quick moment of noticing, is a moment of you. It's a moment of awareness. An awareness of your being. You before thought. The deeper you. In that moment, you have the opportunity to notice your aliveness. To notice the energy that runs through you. The energy that is you.
American author John Graves said "You notice. And noticing, you live."
Dr. Robert Holden, British positive psychologist, calls it "The holy church of noticing".
Noticing can feel like paying attention to where you are placing your focus. We can and often have many things going on internally at the same time. Random thoughts, habitual thoughts, sensations, perceptions, etc... and underneath it all is a deeper sense of who you are and always have been before all the rest. Noticing is placing your attention there. Noticing is taking note of the times when the deeper you surfaces and brings you back to yourself. Just for a moment, stay with it. Hold still. Be present. Just now. Notice that you may have that experience more and more and perhaps for longer and longer.
At a recent workshop, a woman from Ireland was talking about how she couldn't get to the feeling of herself because it was behind her habitual stress feelings. She could see her own aliveness as if through a cloud of stress. However, she only felt and lived in the stress. She completely transformed, in a second, when she noticed that she could place her focus on the deeper feelings always present behind the stressful feelings. As she got more comfortable with focusing on what felt good, the stress feelings dissipated on their own. Remember about the self-cleaning blender from last week? Noticing is one of the mechanisms by which the blender of our thought system cleans itself.
For me, it was and still is an allowing myself to focus on who I always am before thought and placing my attention and focus on the peace feeling rather than a negative feeling. And then the deeper feelings grow. Trust me, they really do.
With Love,
Sara Joy
The Magic of Noticing