Examine assumptions about perception and identity. Practices that test everyday assumptions about seeing, hearing, the body, memory, and the sense of being someone.
14 practices, each a few minutes. You can read them here and do them on your own, or work through them guided, one at a time, in the interactive version.
1. Visual Field Experiment
Examine seeing itself.
How to do it
Hold your gaze on the center point.
Without shifting focus, notice what is present in the periphery.
Remain still.
Where does seeing happen — in the eyes, or somewhere else?
2. Sound Without Listener
Listen without constructing a listener.
How to do it
Attend to whatever sounds are present.
Notice the space in which sound appears.
Rest here for a moment.
What did you notice about listening?
3. Body As Sensation Field
Examine what the body actually is.
How to do it
Without looking, attend to any part of the body.
Select a region and look closely.
What is actually present?
Did you find a body, or did you find sensation?
4. Memory As Present Thought
Examine where memory actually exists.
How to do it
Recall a memory.
Where is it happening? The past — or here, now, as a thought?
Notice: where is the past right now? What can actually be found?
Did this change anything about how the past feels?
5. Language Dissolving
Examine the relationship between description and experience.
How to do it
Notice what you are experiencing right now.
Type it.
Watch the words disappear.
The experience continues.
What is the relationship between the description and the thing it described?
6. Agency Simulation
Examine the mechanics of choice.
How to do it
Decide to press a button.
Notice: the decision to decide — where did that come from?
Before the thought "I will press," was there a prior thought?
Where does the sense of "I chose this" come from?
7. Reactivity Loop
Notice how reactivity forms.
How to do it
Notice something mildly irritating or uncomfortable.
What happens in the body first?
What thought follows? What impulse follows that thought?
Which part felt automatic?
8. Identity Construction
Examine how a self is assembled.
How to do it
Notice the roles you carry: your name, profession, relationships.
What is the relationship between these roles and you?
What holds them together?
What is present if you subtract the roles?
9. Mortality Contemplation
Consider finitude directly.
How to do it
Consider the possibility that this body will cease.
Sit with that possibility without resolving it.
What, if anything, was present when you sat with this?
10. This Is a Screen
How to do it
You are looking at glass.
Light is entering your eyes.
Words are guiding attention.
Notice this.
11. Narrative vs Sensation
Notice the difference between story and direct experience.
How to do it
Attend to what is present.
What else arises around it?
Attend to the sensation directly, before the commentary arrives.
What is sensation without interpretation?
12. Waking From Dream
Investigate the dissolution of a world.
How to do it
Recall this morning, the moment you woke.
There was a world. Then it wasn't there.
What changed — the world, or something else?
What is the difference between a world that is real and one that isn't?
13. Silence Interruption
Investigate the space between sounds.
How to do it
Notice the presence of sound.
Notice the space between sounds.
Rest here for a moment.
Is silence the absence of sound, or is sound an interruption of silence?
14. Looking Back
Sit with what has emerged.
How to do it
Review what you have noticed across these modules.
What, if anything, has shifted in how experience appears?
What, if anything, stood out? Across all of this, was anything constant?