60 TAKE A NEIGHBORHOOD WALK

One of my favorite informal natural awareness practices is taking a walk in my neighborhood.

As I head out my front door, I let my mind think—let it do its thing, whatever that may be (planning, reviewing, replaying, and so on). Sometimes I’m thinking through a thorny issue, trying to solve a problem that’s been gnawing at me. But usually my mind is just reviewing the stuff of the day, like staffing issues at work or whether my daughter is watching too much TV or why I let her watch any TV whatsoever. So I let my mind ruminate, not trying to be particularly aware. I just give myself total permission to think.

After some time, my mind usually begins to calm down, and natural awareness starts to show itself, just like the sun poking through a cloudy sky for a moment or two. Again, I don’t try too hard, but when I find myself glimpsing natural awareness, I acknowledge the glimpse and let it be there. Then I might fall back into thinking.

Often my thoughts turn to my surroundings: Wow, I love what my neighbor did with her yard or Really? What was that neighbor thinking with that addition? But at this point, the natural awareness is infusing the thinking. I am thinking (and sometimes even in a somewhat petty way, as I cannot help but assess architecture and landscape), but at the same time, I am noticing the thinking occurring. The noticing seems to be happening on its own, and I am aware of it.

Thinking slowly grows more transparent. I use this word, transparent, to signify the way in which thoughts seem to be part of it all. There are sights and sounds and my body in motion, and there are my thoughts and feelings and opinions (typically about design), and it is as though I can see through all of it—as if everything were transparent. Nothing appears to have weight. Everything flies by with no central sense of me.

I do go in and out of more identification with objects (my thoughts, emotions, the things around me), but often I can easily settle back into the feel of my body in motion, the sensation of my feet on the sidewalk, or the touch of the air against my skin, as well as the pleasant feeling that is in my being. The happiness of natural awareness is present for me, without my trying too hard. My mind is naturally aware, and I’m just along for the ride.