Expand Your Sensory Horizons

It’s been such a pleasure to discover how

Maggie Smith

's approach to poetry aligns with the ways I encourage people to cultivate mindful awareness. I’m taking my time to meander through her new book¹ and listen to her unpack its themes with various podcasters.²

What hinders making poems also obstructs strengthening mindfulness, and her heartfelt pep talks apply to both.

Focusing too much on results

Most people who turn to mindfulness hope it will relieve their stress, sadness, or anxiety. While consistent practice can help us learn to navigate emotional pain better, it’s not a quick fix. Focusing on the desired benefits paradoxically gets in the way of experiencing them.

Mindfulness practice goes beyond merely noticing your breath and calming down. It involves improving your relationship with yourself, fostering greater intimacy with being alive, and learning to inhabit a wider range of circumstances more fully.

When I lead mindfulness meditation groups, I can detect when people are developing a clearer understanding of the practice when their observations start to sound less like stories and more like poems.³

Narratives need heroes, villains, and escalating conflict. They have beginnings, endings, and drama in between. Poetry can work with or without these elements. It’s the artistic cousin of learning to live without certainty or every plot line being resolved.

Focusing on the process sets the stage for the results you’re looking for, but it’s impossible to predict when they will appear, and when they do, they might look and feel very different from what you’d imagined.

Maggie says, “You can’t force a poem, but I think you can prepare for one.” The same goes for developing mindful awareness, an excellent way to invite more poetry into your life.

When a bird flew into the house last weekend, I immediately began playing with the image and related feelings it stirred up.

A small bird just fluttered
onto our kitchen counter before
immediately darting back out
the open door it
entered through.

I barely had a second
to live with
the possibility of it
becoming
trapped inside
with me.

Now I hear singing
in the backyard.

Sure, it could be any bird,
but please entertain

with me
for now

the off-chance
he could be the one
also tweeting out a fresh poem
to friends he doesn't know
about what just happened

to him.

Spiritual people like to celebrate
when the veil between worlds
becomes thinner,
but when is it
ever thick enough
to keep wildness out?

By staying open and curious, we can break free from the dull trance of familiarity and our usual narrative constraints to tap into the richness of being alive more frequently.

Trying too hard to get it right

When we try to describe our experience of paying closer attention through mindfulness or poetry, our words can make what we noticed sound amorphous and oblique, even though the awareness was tangible and vivid.

People are often reluctant to describe their experiences because they fear their observations will sound silly or nonsensical. We’re used to telling stories, but describing our raw perceptions feels awkward.

It turns out, however, that simply attempting to find the right words is enough. The slipperiness of language is relatable. Some of the most significant moments in our lives defy neat descriptions. It feels satisfying and refreshingly human when the essence of what is nearly impossible to convey manages to slip through our best available words, even though they’re imperfect.

Contemplative practice is more art than science. The quality of our attention matters more than the clinical precision of our language. Our minds try to steer the show, control outcomes, and avoid messy emotions, which causes our focus to become brittle and narrow.

In those moments, we can try to remember to zoom out to notice all that’s unfolding more broadly. The present is big and messy. Our minds are in a hurry to apprehend and flatten it. By expanding the aperture on how much sensory detail we're willing to take in, we can gradually undermine our rigid intentions, attend to what's happening right now, and allow it to surprise and enliven us.

“So many of my poems were made possible only because I took the time to look at my surroundings, listen to the wind and the birds, touch leaves to know their textures, breathe deeply to describe what the autumn air smelled like. Being sensitive, attuned, observant—these things don't just improve your writing, they improve your life.”

~ Maggie Smith

If you want to become more mindful, write poetry, or both, try not to view your efforts as tests. Instead, embrace habitual playfulness and curiosity, allowing yourself to be surprised by what’s happening within and around you.

I look forward to hearing your imperfect reports.

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Exercise

This attention exercise focuses on broadening the spatial range of each sensory category you notice.