Go with the Sensory Flow

Writer and philosopher Alan Watts described a human conundrum decades ago that resonates conceptually but remains difficult to accept viscerally.

"There is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity."¹

Change can be enlivening, like when spring finally arrives, an infant starts toddling, or some lingering pain disappears. It can be depleting when your least favorite season returns, a friend moves away, or your back goes out.

While we have ways to celebrate and curse situational shifts, it can be liberating to habitually tune into the ongoing fluctuations happening at the sensory level. This move has to be learned, however, and although it’s a natural human capacity, it’s difficult to pass on socially. Shifts in awareness aren’t perceptible to anyone else.

Luckily, contemplative practices capable of transforming our lives invite us to develop a closer relationship with change as it occurs in real time.

We primarily perceive ourselves as characters in a story. Stories give us villains and something to look forward to on the other side of whatever makes our lives difficult in the current chapter. Stories also appeal to us because they're so much tidier than daily life, where resolution can be elusive, and sometimes never arrives at all.

While waiting for better versions of our lives to appear, we develop countless ways to undermine or even battle how being alive feels inside. We instinctively resist discomfort and confusion while trying to make pleasant moments last longer, choking the life out of them.

Mindfulness meditation lets us investigate the moment-to-moment fluctuations even in our most mundane and repetitive circumstances. While psychology, philosophy, and social media offer a firehose of unsolicited advice for solving our problems, practicing mindfulness quietly encourages us to notice our lives in their unresolved messiness.

I appreciate having more freedom to alternate between improving myself and the world, and savoring the sensory richness of being alive regardless of the circumstances.

It took months for me to regain the range of motion in my right shoulder after I dislocated it while running a marathon. I felt excruciatingly powerless when my daughter developed a severe infection immediately after giving birth to her son, and it didn't respond to intravenous antibiotics. When I had to work under a relentless micromanager, I faced a difficult choice of whether to stay or leave, even though neither offered any relief.

My mindfulness practice didn’t make any of these challenges go away or resolve them more quickly. It didn’t exempt me from physical or emotional distress. It allowed me to adjust to the pace of situational change that was beyond my control, scale my awareness down to the level of immediate perceptions, and, more often than never, to witness both my pain and my moment-by-moment relationship to it as separate strands of subjective experience.

This helps me avoid escalating every pain into something more miserable and lessens the automaticity of taking my unpleasant feelings personally.

Instead of finding abstract comfort in knowing this too shall pass, tangible comfort can be found whenever you yield to the passing itself, not as a story about the future, but through the current sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, and feelings streaming around and through me now — and now — and now.

Exercising your body equips you with more energy and vitality. Exercising your attention prepares you to shift your focus to the real-time sensory details. Changing how we respond to sensations gradually transforms how we relate to situations, changing what it feels like to be alive, even during seemingly unbearable moments and chapters.

Situations eventually change, but sensations are in constant flux. We can learn to become fascinated by their flow and feel more alive when our awareness is absorbed in their passing rather than at odds with it.

It’s like something else Mr. Watts observed: “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”²

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Circumstances for learning this attention exercise

• waiting for a medical appointment

• during a boring meeting

• rocking a baby to sleep

Exercise

The exercise focuses on experiencing impermanence directly through your senses.