Aliveness.
Living in the moment.
When I started this channel, looking for names for it, one of the names I was looking at was “aliveness”.
Something involving this this word “aliveness”.
Because it seems like that captures a lot of the idea of a meaningful life.
I want a life where I actually feel alive, whatever that means.
To feel like I’m actually living, instead of- you know, we can just think about all these other things and get distracted with all these other concerns, but in the end, we have a chance to live a life, and that to me is the most interesting thing, the most important thing, is to really make use of this chance that I have to be alive.
And I want to experience life in whatever way I can.
So that’s what this series is about: getting back in touch with this feeling of aliveness and celebrating being alive.
So one part of it is the notion of wonder, and the wonderful universe, wonderful life, and just connecting with this idea that whatever this is, it’s really quite amazing.
And if we remember that, we can really capture that feeling of being alive.
Like, you know, we can become frustrated with how something’s not working today, there’s some problems. We can get so focused on these little problems.
But the little things that are working every day are amazing.
I mean, it’s amazing that we can experience this world.
I mean, even things that are so basic, we don’t even think about it usually past childhood.
It’s maybe getting back to that joy of simple things is so much of what it’s all about.
Like just even the fact that we can see light.
We can see colours.
We can hear sounds.
We can hear music.
Smells, tastes, touch.
Just that experience of the senses and the wonderful experience of what’s around us.
I mean, if we really thought about that and focused on it, it would be amazing.
Now, there’s all these other concerns that get in the way, and they interfere with this simple enjoyment of existence in this universe.
So what are the ways that we can get back to it? Well, we have things that awaken the senses, things that trigger the senses, like music, art, and art in, you know, made by people, and just natural art, you could say, just seeing nature, seeing the sky and the land and the water and all the things around us, just appreciating what’s around us, enjoying the senses and what they provide.
And so the art that we see from nature, or from manufactured art, that’s triggering each of the senses, helps to awaken us to feel present and existing in this universe, instead of getting lost in our head thinking about plans we have to make, things we have to do, the ways that, you know, our life is not matching the life we want, and all these things that are off, and things that might go wrong later, or that did go wrong in the past.
All these thoughts are interfering with the basic sensory experience of the moment.
So anything that can trigger our senses to bring us back to that moment can have a very powerful effect.
Another thing is in terms of our state of mind, what is it that makes this state of mind that blocks us? Too much thinking, too much of a serious, fixed state of mind that almost becomes brittle.
We get a brittle state of mind if we are too fixed in our way of thinking.
And that’s where humour is very powerful.
By having a sense of humour, by having a sense of playfulness, we can have this kind of fluid looseness, to be able to flow with what happens, to be able to break out of this kind of prison of thoughts and just be able to appreciate the moment.
So the joy of the senses and the joy of humour: these are things that I think we absolutely need in order to feel alive.
#aliveness #feelalive #liveinthemoment